THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES l: !| Blackwell Zbc Canterbury poctB Edited by William Sharp SELECTIONS FROM THE POEMS OF EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. By the same Author. THE LORD OF THE DARK RED STAR. A Novel. Price 6s. »*« FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK. © RAMATIC SONNETS, POEMS, AND BALLADS: SELEC- TIONS FROM THE POEMS OF EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM SHARP. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. Hos CONTENTS. Section I. — Sonnets of the Wingless Hours. (From "Wingless Hours." ) To the Muse Fairy Godmothers Lost Years In Dreams Eagles of Tiberius A Snails' Derby River Babble Twilight . The Sundial King Christmas Elfin Skates . To my Tortoise Chronos PAGE I . 2 • 3 ■ 4 • 5 . 6 7,8 • 9 IO, II . 12 13, 14 • 15 Section II.— Dramatic Scenes and Ballads. The Bride of Porphyrion . . . . .19 Adalhita 29 947637 VI Contents. PAGE The Mandolin • 34 Sister Mary van der Deck • 43 Hunting the King .... • 57 The Fiddle and the Slipper . . 64 Ipsissimus ..... . 81 Section III. — Sonnets of Life and Fate. (From "Wingless Hours") What the Sonnet is . . 89 Sunken Gold ..... . 90 Idle Charon ...... • 91 Lethe ...... . 92 On some Fourteenth-Century Saints • 93 The Death of Tuck .... 94. 95 The Wreck-Rock Bell . . 96 Baudelaire ..... • 97 Sea-shell Murmurs .... . 98 To the So-called Venus of Milo ■ 99 The Ransom of Peru . 100 The Ring of Faustus . . IOI The Silent Fellow .... . 102 The Ever Young . . . .10; !, 104, 105 A Flight from Glory . 106 Spring . 107 Oberon's Last Council . 10S The Grave of Omar Khayyam . . 109 The Wreck of Heaven IIO, III On the Fly-leaf of Leopardi's Poems . 112 Sonnet Gold ..... • "3 Contents. Vll PAGE All Souls' Day .... • 114, "5 To my Tortoise Ananke . . 116 Epilogue to the Sonnets . . 117 Section IV.— From "The Fountain of Youth. 1 ' Chorus of the Spirits of Youth (The Rejuvena- tion of .Eson) ...... 121 Chorus of the Spirits of Age . . . .124 Song of the Water- Witches . . . .126 Song of the Arrow-Poisoners . . • .129 Chorus of Dawn Spirits 13 2 Section V. — Imaginary Sonnets. Henry I. to the Sea Venus to Tannh'auser Farinata to Conquered Florence Carmagnola to the Republic of Venice Leonardo da Vinci to his Snakes Lorenzo de Medici to his Last Autumn Luca Signorelli to his Son Vasco de Gama to the Spirit of Tempests Balboa to the Pacific Ponce de Leon to the Fountain of Youth Doctor Faustus to Helen of Troy Cardinal Wolsey to his Hound Michael Angelo to his Statue of Day Lady Jane Grey to the Flowers and Birds Catherine Talbot to her Child . 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146, 147 148, 149 • 150 • 151 • 152 • 153 VI 11 Contents. Chastelard to Mary Stuart The Wandering Jew to Distant Rome Arabella Stuart to the Unseen Spring Galileo to the Earth Alexander Selkirk to his Shadow Stradivarius to an Unfinished Violin Latude to his Bastille Rats Cazotte to a Supper Party Kosciusko to the Corpse of Poland . The Last Doge to Fettered Venice . 155, Section VI. — Odes and other Poems. An Ode of the Tuscan Shore . A Pageant of Siena . On a Tuscan Road . Prince Charlie's Weather-Vane Plcciola . The Archangels Section VII.— Forest Notes. To the Forest .... Song (" Under the Winter, dear ") Durability Wood Honey . Noon's Dream-Song Little Love-Song The Forest's Soul . Contents. ix PAGE Unknown Songsters . 208 Summer Woods . . 209 Among the Firs . . . . . 2IO Wood Song . . 211 The Passing Wing . . . . . 212 Old Forest Charms . . . . • 213 The Charge of the Winged Steeds . . 214 Introductory Note. Some eight years ago a little book appeared entitled Sonnets of the Wingless Hours. This book was received not only with the respect due to a poet whose earlier writings had won him a distinguished minor place, but with a cordial recognition that by it English poetry had been enriched. Here, it was realised, was a man who had something to say that was worth saying and was said in a new way. True, some of Mr. Eugene Lee-Hamilton's critics had recognised this from the first, since the pub- lication of Gods, Saints, and Men, in 1880; and others had come to see in succeeding volumes the justification of the praise and confidence of the few who had welcomed a new writer of distinction. It was not, however, till the appearance of Sonnets of the Wingless Hours that anything like justice was done to the rare merits of the author. Per- xii Introductory Note. haps in some degree this was due to aroused sympathy: sympathy with what rumour hinted of a life of tragical suffering bravely borne, enhanced by the corroborative evidence of the writings themselves. Casual critics had complained of the emphasised note of personal loss, personal despair, without recognising that the author was not adopt- ing a pose, but was sincerely giving expression to a bitter truth. Nor, again, had these commentators known the work in its proper proportions: they had seen certain features in exaggerated relief, they discerned nothing of the artistic equipoise which rendered the poet's verse variegated in charm as well as in sombre power, in delicate beauty as well as in the weird and fantastic, the despairing and the tragical. A critic complained once, in an essay on pessimism in modern poetry, that all the writers of Mr. Lee-Hamilton's way of thought were pessimists, because they could never see life in its happy minor moods, or recognise that delicacy of thought and lightness of touch could, in art, go as far, or farther, than " a sad strenuous- ness." The proposition thus put is not true or relevant, but merely vague and inconsequently assertive. To see life in its happy minor moods is a spiritual faculty that may quite well co-exist with an intellectual inability to accept every vicissitude of human destiny as plain evidence of divine care Introductory Note. xiii and love : and a poet can blithely rejoice in the sweet natural world, or happily live and move in the world of the imagination, even if the primary dogmas of the Churcn are a dead letter to him. As to any inevitable quality in intellectual pessimism tending to dissociation from delicacy of thought and light- ness of touch, there is certainly no more than the like inevitable quality in optimism tending to asso- ciation with the terrible and painful: these directions are matters of temperament, of individual outlook, not of theory as to life's limitations and destinies. Darley was a pessimist and unhappy in his life and circumstances, but no English poet has surpassed him in the delicacy of his vision of the imaginative world of fairyland and the greenwood life, or equalled him in lightness of touch. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a pessimist, in the current use of the word at least ; but no contemporary has given us a more charming and humorous and convincingly vivid portrayal of human life than the author of U?ider the Greenwood Tree. And, it might well be asked, who among living poets has given us so delightful and delicately sure a revelation of the "fairy" world, from the characteristic English standpoint at any rate, as Mr. Lee-Hamilton has done in poems such as, for example, the two sonnets of "The Death of Puck" in Sonnets of the Wwgless Hours ? — xiv Introductory Note. I fear that Puck is dead, —it is so long Since men last saw him ;— dead with all the rest Of that sweet elfin crew that made their nest In hollow nuts, where hazels sing their song ; Dead and for ever, like the antique throng The elves replaced : the Dryad that you guessed Behind the leaves ; the Naiad weed-bedressed ; The leaf-eared Faun that loved to lead you wrong. Tell me, thou hopping Robin, hast thou met A little man, no bigger than thyself, Whom they call Fuck, where woodland bells are wet ? Tell me, thou Wood-Mouse, hast thou seen an elf Whom they call Puck, and is he seated yet, Capped with a snail-shell, on his mushroom shelf? II. The Robin gave three hops, and chirped, and said : " Yes, I knew Puck, and loved him ; though I trow He mimicked oft my whistle, chuckling low; Yes, I knew cousin Puck ; but he is dead. We found him lying on his mushroom bed — The Wren and I, — half covered up with snow, As we were hopping where the berries grow. We think he died of cold. Ay, Puck is fled." Introductory Note. xv And then the Wood- Mouse said : " We made the Mole Dig him a little grave beneath the moss, And four big Dormice placed him in the hole. The Squirrel made with sticks a little cross ; Puck was a Christian elf, and had a soul; And all we velvet-jackets mourn his loss." This is the same poet who elsewhere (in The New Medusa) reveals his personal tragedy in lines such as — " What work I do, I do with numbed, chained hand With scanty light, and seeing ill the whole, And each small part, once traced, must changeless stand Beyond control " or newly conveys the more impersonal world- sorrow at the loss of ancient faith, as in the fine sonnet "Idle Charon" which opens the volume entitled Apollo and Mar sy as — " The shores of Styx are lone for evermore, And not one shadowy form upon the steep Looms through the dusk, as far as eyes can sweep, To call the ferry over as of yore ; But tintless rushes, all about the shore, Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep, Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep With tightening grasp all round the unused oar. xvi Introductory Note. For in the world of Life strange rumours run That now the Soul departs not with the breath, But that the Body and the Soul are one ; And in the loved one's mouth, now, after death, The widow puts no obol, nor the son, To pay the ferry in the world beneath." Mr. Eugene Lee-Hamilton was born in London, in January 1845, and was still in infancy when his father died. Mrs. Lee-Hamilton was a woman of marked individuality and of exceptional mental powers, so that it was natural she should prefer to educate her child herself. This was the more fortunate for her son in so far that he was not tied down to the routine of schooling in one place, because Mrs. Lee- Hamilton enjoyed and believed in the value of varied experience of " places, men, and things " abroad. Thus the early years of Eugene Lee-Hamilton were mainly spent in Fiance and Germany. When nineteen he went to Oriel College, Oxford, and in the same year (1864) took the Taylorian Scholarship in Modern Languages and Litera- ture : an excellent proof that he had not suffered by maternal education in lieu of the usual school routine. By many passages and allusions in the poet's early Poems and Transcripts and Introductory Note. xvii other volumes, it is clear that this Oxford period was the happiest in his life. In addition to ex- ceptional mental powers, he had good health and enjoyed all'but-door life, and the ambition to excel was the salt to the pleasant savour of youth. When he left Oxford, it was to enter (in 1869) the Diplo- matic Service. Mr. Lee-Hamilton began mature life along two lines of development : the line of diplomacy, and the line of study and a severe intellectual training. Perhaps it was during the early period of this dual strain that the first symptoms of nature's warning that he was incurring an excess of nervous expenditure revealed them- selves: if so, they were too slight to attract any particular notice. After six months' work at the Foreign Office, he was attached to the British Embassy at Paris, one of the primary reasons for this appointment being his proficiency as a French linguist, and his interest in and considerable know- ledge of French life. Life at the Embassy, always interesting, became an exciting experience at the outbreak of the Franco-German War. The work, however, now involved a greatly-enhanced strain, and as the young student-diplomatist was not so strong as he looked, he began slowly to suffer in minor but harassing ways. In all, he served three years under our Ambassador, Lord Lyons, and accompanied the Embassy to Tours, Bordeaux, xviii Introductory Note. and Versailles in its respective domiciliary changes during the war. Possibly, if the young diplomatist could have had a long rest after his arduous labours during the Franco-German War, he might have avoided a break-down which was becoming almost inevitable, though its imminence or seriousness was unrecognised by himself or others. It was with relief, however, that in 1873 he found himself appointed to our Legation at Lisbon, under Sir Charles Murray. At first the change to a warmer climate, and to a new and picturesque environment, effected some good to failing health. Then, rapidly, the first dread symptoms of a cerebro-spinal disease revealed themselves. The young diplomatist's career was at an end. Not long after his resignation and departure from Lisbon, he himself realised that all his hopes and ambitions were doomed to frustration. By this time, in a semi-paralysed condition, he was now an acknowledged sufferer from the same dread and agonising disease which had kept Heine on his mattress-grave for so many weary years till death released the poet from his martyrdom. In a brief while from the first definite collapse (in 1874), all hope was practically aban- doned. It seemed but a question of time, of physical endurance, and moral courage. All the published poetic work of Eugene Lee- Introductory Note. xix Hamilton (with the slight exception of his share in Forest Notes) was accomplished within the twenty years, from 1874 to 1894, when, practically paralysed, all ways in pain, and for years in a con- tinuous martyrdom of acute suffering and nervous agony, he endured with a latent vitality and an undaunted courage what almost seemed beyond human courage or vitality to meet. It is the knowledge of this dreadful suffering, and all of bitter regret, disillusion, and relinquish- ment involved, which gives his poetry in general, and the Sottnctsof the Wingless Hours in particular, so poignant an accent. How, in the circumstances, so much fine work was achieved may well astonish us : the accomplishment of the finer portion might seem incredible if the method and manner of composition were fully realised. Let it suffice to say that for a long period Mr. Lee- Hamilton's suffering was too acute to enable him to be read to; conversations, messages, letters, had to be con- densed into a few essential words; even the poetry he so loved had to be read to him at long intervals, and often had to be limited to a couple of lines at a time. In dictation of his own poetry he was almost as restricted. At one time he could not have dictated the whole of a sonnet straightway; for a considerable period a line or two at a time had to suffice. Twenty years of the maturity of a xx Introductory Note. man's life, from thirty to fifty; think of it ! ... of all that is involved, of all that it means ! . . . and this, too, without hope of recovery, and with likeli- hood of enhanced suffering. Yet in these twenty years the poet never despaired in the sense of turning his face to the wall and refusing further terms with life. Volume after volume came from him, and not only original verse, but a careful and scholarly metrical translation of Dante, in itself a heavy labour even for the time and energy of an enthusiast unencumbered in health and circum- stance. Truly, Heine's brother of the mattress- grave endured and lived by poetry alone. It was this inward life, this indwelling spirit, this star in the mind which kept despair at bay, and gave a few rare moments of solace and beauty to the weary round of the wingless hours. He has him- self said better than any other can say what Poetry meant to him: — " I think the fairies to my christening came ; But they were wicked sprites and envious elves, Who brought me gall, as bitter as themselves, In tiny tankards wrought with fairy flame. They wished me love of books — each little dame— With power to read no book upon my shelves ; Fair limbs for numbness ; Dead-Sea fruits by twelves, And every bitter blessing you can name. Introductory Note. xxi But one good elf there was, and she let fall A single drop of Poesy's wine of gold In every little tankard full of gall. •« So, year by year, as woes and pains grow old, The little golden drop is in them all ; But bitterer is the cup than can be told." We may fairly contrast this poetry, this attitude, with that of other poets of " gloom and sorrow and sadness," with whom Eugene Lee-Hamilton has with only partial justice been classed. One of the greatest poets of Italy won the sympathy of the reading world by the sincerity and uniformity of his lamentations upon the evil of life : and though not even the lyrical genius and powerful intellect of Leopardi can now recall his retreated fame across the borders of youth and hope, there was a time when his poetry of lamentation was held to be justified by the weariness, ill-health, and shattered energies which from early manhood accompanied his disappointed and brief life. But none, surely, could say that the English poet had not endured a bitterer destiny, yet with a far greater dignity in reticence of personal lament. No contemporary writer has suffered more : but where do we find the embittered hatred and scorn of life so characteristic of many of those who have xxii Introductory Note. known the hard way ? He bears no ill-will to those of happier fortunes: he curses no gods: and if he is sad in mind and sick at heart, if the tragical and poignant and pathetic appeal to him as themes oftener than a perfect sanity would adjudge right, that, surely, is but natural. In the Italy where he has spent most of his life, and knows so well despite restricted opportunities, there are poets who have outdone the prophets in anathema and bewailing, without a tenth part of the justification of Eugene Lee-Hamilton. Read not only the great Carducci in his sombre moments, but Mario Rapisardi, the representative poet of the south; or Arturo Graf, the typical pessimist of that northern Italy which has become so Germanised; or Ada Negri, the author of Fatalitct and Tempest c, books which have had a wide sale and a wider and deeper influence, and wherein the cry of revolt and the snarl against life become hysterical through sheer intensity. Then turn to even so sad a book as Sonnets of the Wingless Hours. What serenity in suffering, what dignity in pain, what control over bitterness ! How insincere much of Baudelaire appears in this contrast, how crude the savage banalities of Maldoror ; how rhetorical even the sombre verse of the author of The City of Dreadful Night / In one respect at least, Eugene Lee-Hamilton and the late Philip Bourke Marston Introductory Note. xxiii should be remembered together: for these two poets of lifelong suffering and loss have ever, to use an old-fashioned phrase, been gentlemen in their sorrow. To return to the poet's career subsequent to his collapse after his retirement from the diplomatic service. From Lisbon he went to Florence, to the home of his mother, who had remarried some ten years after her first husband's death. Here, with Mrs. Paget, as she now was, and with his half- sister Violet Paget, later to become so well known as Vernon Lee, he spent the ensuing twenty years in the circumstances indicated, and with only a few brief summer changes (then, as in his ordinary " airings " in Florence, having to be conveyed on a wheeled bed) to Siena, or the Bagni di Lucca. During the first three years of his painful and disabling malady, Mr. Lee- Hamilton revised some of his youthful productions in verse, and, having selected and amplified, published his first volume, Poems and Transcripts. This was in 1878, and from that date the author continuously devoted himself to the art he has loved and so well served. His early book is interesting as a prelude : all the author's qualities are foreshadowed, if sometimes dimly. It reveals an indifferent accomplishment in technique, but the poet-touch is often evident and convincing. Even if the volume had not b xxiv Introductory Note. appeared at a time when the cult of deft metrical artifice was absorbing the attention of poets and critics, it is certain that Poems and Transcripts could have had no great measure of success. Yet one may turn to the book with pleasure, though the author has travelled a long way in the twenty-five years which have passed since its publication. Two years later (1880) the poet's second volume appeared. Gods, Saints, and Mc7i showed an unmistakable advance. It was evident that a new craftsman in dramatic verse, in the dramatic ballad and lyrical narrative, had entered the lists. The touch was still unequal, the art often inter- spaced with disillusioning phrase, or dragged by the prosaic clay of the overworn or colourless word, the jejeune epithet. But it was a poet and not merely a verse-writer who challenged criticism. And this, in itself a distinction, was still more manifest in The New Medusa and Apollo and Marsyas, published respectively in 1882 and 1884. If in the later of these two volumes is no ballad to surpass in dramatic intensity "The Raft" in the earlier, the narrative and ballad poems show a more scrupulous art and compelling power. Their author loves a terrible subject as a gourmet loves a delicacy: it is the rich food and strong wine most beloved of his imagination. In " Sister Mary of the Plague," in this 1884 volume, he has a theme Introductory Note. xxv which has the demerit of fundamental unreality, but the merit of intensely dramatic possibility. This theme is «ne that might easily be treated repul- sively, but which Mr. Lee-Hamilton has rendered in beauty, and as to whose imaginative reality he convinces us. But if in this tale of a vampire- woman to whom the enormity of her hidden life and frightful destiny are accidentally revealed, a revelation met not only with despair but with spiritual abhorrence, the poet has succeeded where most would fail, he has not always the like good fortune. Personally I find the flaws in workman- ship more obvious in these dramatic narratives and ballads than in his sonnets, where the discipline of the form has for this poet ever exercised a salutary influence. Perhaps his finest achievement in this kind is the vivid dramatic narrative, "Abraham Carew," a Puritan fanatic who has wilfully murdered his only and dearly loved daughter under the terrible obsession of the idea that the sacrifice is required of him by the Almighty. It is refreshing to turn from sombre and tragical studies such as " Sister Mary of the Plague," "Abraham Carew," "The Wonder of the World," " Ipsissimus," and others, to a romantic ballad so strong and spirited as " Hunting the King " (based on the historic episode of Drouet's night-ride to Varennes). Yet even in the volume containing xxvi Introductory Note. these noteworthy ballads and dramatic poems, the most memorable part is not that which comprises them, but that where a score of sonnets reveal a surer inspiration and a finer technique. As in Tlie New Medusa one after a time recalls only vaguely "The Raft" and other strenuous compositions, one remembers sonnet after sonnet. One of these, " Sea-shell Murmurs," is already accepted as one of the finest contemporary achievements of its kind — and none the less because the central image is familiar: the more, indeed, from the triumph of imparting to an outworn poetic symbol a new life and a new beauty. A genuine if limited success came to Mr. Lee- Hamilton with the publication in 1888 of his Imaginary Sonnets, despite its equivocal title. Here, in truth, it was realised, was a poet who had won the right to be considered seriously. On the other hand, his next volume, the poetic drama called The Fountain of Youth, though containing some of the poet's finest passages, and with the advantage of one of those deep-based themes which ignite the imagination of all of us, was almost ignored by the reading public. It is difficult to understand why this fine book failed to win wider appreciation than it did. The fault cannot lie wholly with the might-be readers, or with the critics — several of whom spoke of it highly. Prob- Introductory Note. xxvii ably the reason in part lies in that monotony in handling which characterises many of the author's narrative poems; and in the like tendency to wed fine and commonplace lines and passages in an incompatible union. Possibly the real reason is that "the reader" does not wish to be led to any Fountain of Youth, even if by Ponce de Leon himself (the author's " hero " ), unless it be to a revelation of hope. The fountains of disillusion are dreaded by most of us. Three years later, in 1S94, Mr. Lee-Hamilton's finest book, with its beautiful and appropriate title Sonnets of tlie Wingless Hours, convinced even those who had hitherto shown indifference, that here was a true and fine poet with an utterance all his own, an inspiration that none could gainsay, and a gift of beauty worthy indeed of welcome. The collection was not, it is true, of wholly new poetry: many of the sonnets had already appeared in earlier volumes. But here, it was realised, was brought together the most unalloyed ore that the poet had to offer : old and new, the collection was at once unique, beautiful, and convincing. From 1S74 to 1894 — in these twenty years the poet had never stirred from his wheeled bed. In these twenty years he had endured suffering so continuous and hopeless as to be all but unen- durable — and in pain and difficulty, often only xxviii Introductory Note. line by line, sometimes literally only by a word or two at a time, had dictated all these volumes. For many weeks in each year, at one time for many sequent months, he could see even his intimate friends only at rare intervals and for the briefest periods. It would not be seemly to enlarge upon this long martyrdom: it is enough to indicate out of what steadfastness of will and heroism of endurance these books came to be. Then at last the miraculous happened. Early in the twenty-first year of this prolonged half-life, when he had almost reached the age of fifty, the sufferer began to realise that his disease was on the wane. At first this seemed impossible: then it was feared as a prelude to a worse collapse: finally hope became almost a certainty. Before the summer had passed the invalid arose, restored to new life. True, it took him months to learn to walk again, and even when he could dispense with an attendant and was once more able to go out into the light of day and rejoice in freedom of movement and the rapture of recovered energies, many more months elapsed before he could trust himself to the normal activities of the life he had seen pass from him twenty years back. Thereafter recovery to health became complete, though of course without the elasticity and vigour of men who had reached the same age without Introductory Note. xxix sufferings and in fortunate circumstances. Mr. Lee- Hamilton travelled much. In 1897 he visited America, and returned "a new man." In Rome (for Italy was his adopted country, and he could not live away from it) he met the lady whom in 189S he married — the distinguished Scottish novelist, Miss Annie E. Holdsworth, author of Joanna Traill, Spinster ; The Years that the Locust hath Eaten, and other well-known books. In 1899 many friends of both delighted in a charm- ing little volume of poetry, entitled Forest Notes, wherein husband and wife had collaborated, each giving of their best and freshest, and content to merge their forest notes into one woodland song. No more of biography would be fitting here than to add that two years ago Mr. and Mrs. Lee- Hamilton settled in a charming old villa at San Gervasio outside Florence, on the hill-road to Fiesole: and that with renewed life the poet has again given himself to the Muse he served so well in the years of suffering and lethargy — the lethargy that, as he says in one of the lyrics in The Fountain of Youth, " deadened unthinkable pain." The selection which follows is as representative as practicable. The range is from the poet's early period (Gods, Saints, and Men) to his latest sonnets xxx Introductory Note. written while still in the grip of his terrible disease, and to the "forest notes" composed in the first fresh- ness of rejuvenated life and restored hopes. Several striking narrative poems (e.g., "The Raft" in The New Medusa volume) and many ballads, lyrical pieces, and sonnets have had to be passed over: to these the reader who cares for the virile and beautiful verse of this volume may be advised to turn. In order to understand aright Mr. Lee-Hamilton's work, and properly to estimate it, one must know the conditions which shaped and the circumstances which coloured its growth. So far as practicable this has been indicated in the present note. For a fuller understanding of the mind and spirit of the poet one must look to the poems themselves, and particularly to the sonnets, naturally so much more a personal expression than the dramatic ballads and narrative poems, or than the " imaginary sonnets " — i.e., sonnets imagined to be addressed from some historic individual to another, or to living or inanimate objects, or to an abstraction, or from some creation of the poetic imagination to another, as "Carmagnola to the Republic of Venice" and " Chastelard to Mary Stuart," as " Cardinal Wolsey to his Hound " and " Lady Jane Grey to the Flowers and Birds," as "Michael Angelo to his Statue of Day" and "Alexander Selkirk to his Shadow," as Introductory Note. xxxi "Balboa to the Pacific" and "Henry I. to the Sea," as "Venus to Tannhauser" and " Faustus to Helen of, Troy." Above all, the reader will find what Maeterlinck calls both the outward fatality and the inward destiny, in the fifteen sonnets (selected from The Wingless Hours) which come first in this volume. So simple and vivid is this poetic auto- biography that few readers could fail to grasp the essential features of the author's life, and of the brave, unselfish, and truly poetic spirit which has uplifted it. And this brings me to a point that has from the first been in my mind. No work of art can in the long run be estimated in connection with the maker's circumstances or suffering. Work in any of the arts is excellent, good, mediocre, poor, or bad : we may know the conditional reasons : we may be biassed in sympathy: but we must judge only by the achievement. There can be no greater literary fallacy than to believe that Leopardi's poetry owes what is enduring in it to the pathos of his brief and sorrowful life; that Heine's lyrics are unforgettable because of his mattress-grave; that the odes of Keats are more to be treasured by us because he died young and was derided by an influential critic; that the poems of Shelley are sweeter because he was of the stricken hearts, and was drowned in early manhood; or that the songs xxxii Introductory Note. of Burns, or the lyrics of Poe, are supreme in kind because of the tragical circumstances in the lives of both poets. The essential part of the poetry of Leopardi, Heine, Keats, Shelley, Burns, Poe, is wholly independent of what has been called the pathetic fallacy. Each of these great artists would inevitably refuse to take any other standpoint. Imagine Keats admiring the verse of a writer because he was blind or was a victim to con- sumption, or Heine enduring lyrics on the ground that the author was paralysed or had died untimely through a broken heart ! It is not, therefore, on account of what the author of this book has suffered in body and endured in spirit that I would say, "Read: for here is verse wonderful as having been written in circumstances of almost intolerable hardship: verse moving and beautiful because the solace of a fine mind in a prolonged martyrdom of pain and hopelessness." That would be to do an injustice to the author's fine achievement. I would say first and foremost, " Read : for here is true poetry." The rest is incidental. It is right that we should be biassed by sympathy, and inevitable that the atmosphere wherein we approach should be coloured by that sympathy and an admiring pity; but when we come to the consideration of any work of the imagination, we have to judge of it solely by its Introductory Note. xxxiii conformity with or inability to fulfil these laws. Sorrow and suffering have given their colour to these "little children of pain." We feel their pain the more acutely because we know they are neither imagined through dramatic sympathy nor clad in rhetoric. Each is a personal utterance. But each is more than a statement, however pathetic in fact and moving in sentiment: each is a poem, by virtue of that life which the poet can give only when his emotion becomes rhythmical, and when his art controls that rhythm and compels it to an ordered excellence. Were it not so, these sonnets would merely be exclamatory. They might win our sympathy, they could not win our minds: they might persuade us to pity, they could not charm us with beauty. Look, for example, at the first sonnet one may perchance see: for the moment, it is the third here, " Lost Years." A little less of dis- cipline, and the octave would resolve itself into prose: already the ear revolts against the metallic iterance of "went": but, suddenly, the poetry of the idea and the poetry of the idea's expression become one — " And now my manhood goes where goes the song Of captive birds, the cry of crippled things; It goes where goes the day that unused dies." In some even of those chosen sonnets the infelici- xxxiv Introductory Note. tous because not the convincing or unconsciously satisfying word leads perilously near disillusion. Others have an all but flawless beauty ; and we hardly realise whether we are the more moved by the beauty of the poet's thought, and the sadness whence the thought arises a lovely phantom, or by the hushed air and ordered loveliness of the sonnet itself — as, for example, that entitled " Twilight " — " A sudden pang contracts the heart of Day, As fades the glory of the sunken sun. The bats replace the swallows one by one ; The cries of playing children die away. Like one in pain, a bell begins to sway; A few white oxen, from their labour dune, Pass ghostly through the dusk ; the crone that spun Beside her door, turns in, and all grows grey. And still I lie, as I all day have lain, Here in this garden, thinking of the time Before the years of helplessness and pain ; Or playing with the fringes of a rhyme, Until the yellow moon, amid her train Of throbbing stars, appears o'er yonder lime." After these twenty-one sonnets — the writer's Introductory Note. xxxv Apologia pro vita sua — come several Dramatic Scenes and Ballads selected from Gods, Saints, and Men, 2*he New Medusa, and Apollo and Marsyas. These striking poems will enable the reader to judge as to their author's remarkable narrative power and dramatic instinct. Section III. comprises some thirty sonnets, all from Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, though a few also appeared in earlier volumes. Probably the poet's maturest achievement is here and in the "Imaginary Sonnets": here certainly are to be found some of those sonnets by which he has long been represented in English and American anthologies, — "Sunken Gold," "Idle Charon," "Sea-shell Murmurs," "The So-called Venus of Milo," " Sonnet Gold." The " Odes " which follow are so named by Mr. Lee-Hamilton. They are not odes in the ordinary and proper acceptation, however. That stirring narrative poem, " Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane," for example, should be among the " Dramatic Scenes and Ballads." In these pieces will be seen again the authors remark- able faculty of pictorial vision, vision founded upon close observation at first hand. Read, for example, " On a Tuscan Road," or the beautiful " Pageant of Siena" — as in that second stanza (after which one will not forget that splendid image of the high slim bell-tower stabbing the fiery air) — xxxvi Introductory Note. " Silent and empty in the August glare, The old, depopulated city sleeps ; Its dizzy belfry stabs the fiery air Into the sky's inexorable blue ; Across its great scooped, shell-shaped square there creeps No living soul, nor up the high paved steeps That are its streets ; perhaps a cart sways through Its dusty gates, behind a huge-horned pair, Creaking and empty in the August glare." It is this pictorial and imaginative vision which animates all Mr. Lee-Hamilton's best work. Take a historical episode such as that selected by the author of these poems for one of his " Imaginary Sonnets" — the drowning of the Prince in The White Ship. The theme is one hackneyed by many a balladist and poet : but see how new it is become by virtue of this latest poet's personal vision in union with dramatic insight— "... Let one wide wave Now sweep this land, and make a single grave For king and people. Let the wild gull skim Where now is England, and the sea-fish swim In every drowned cathedral's vaulted nave, As in a green and pillared ocean cave. Introductory Note. xxxvii And if the shuddering pilot ventures there And sees their pinnacles, like rocks to shun, Above the waves, and green with tidal hair, Then let him whisper ..." ■» Finally, in this selection, come several of the "forest notes" from the volume bearing that delightful title — poems full of charm and beauty. The selection, it should be added, has been made (within the necessary limitations for this volume) by Mr. Lee-Hamilton. Probably none could do better: after all — notwithstanding the opinion com- monly held on this point — who should be so well able to judge as the author ? But inevitably many fine sonnets and poems are not here which I for one would gladly see included. Let this brief introductory note end with one of those sonnets which have escaped the author's choice — given now not only because of its beauty, but as char- acteristic of the lofty moral standpoint of all the personal writings of Eugene Lee-Hamilton: — WINE OF OMAR KHAYYAM. He rode the flame-winged dragon-steed of Thought Through Space and Darkness, seeking Heaven and Hell; And searched the farthest stars where souls might dwell To find God's justice: and in vain he sought. xxxviii Introductory Note. Then, looking on the dusk-eyed girl who brought His dream-filled wine beside his garden-well, He said: " Her kiss; the wine-jug's drowsy spell; Bulbul ; the roses; death; ... all else is naught : So drink till that." — What, drink, because the abyss Of Nothing waits ? because there is for man But one swift hour of consciousness and light ? No. — Just because we have no life but this, Turn it to use ; be noble while you can ; Search, help, create ; then pass into the night. WILLIAM SHARP. April, 1903. Sonnets of the Wingless Hours* 1874-94. To the Muse. To the Muse. To keep in life the posture of the grave While others walk and run and dance and leap ; To keep it ever, waking or asleep, While shrink the limbs that Nature goodly gave : In summer's heat no more to breast the wave ; No more to wade through tangled grasses deep ; Nor tread the cornfield where the reapers reap ; Nor stretch the worn limbs beneath a leafy nave : 'Tis hard ; 'tis hard. And so in winter, too, 'Tis hard to hear no more the sweet faint creak Of the crisp snow, the frozen earth's clear ring, Where ripe blue sloes and crimson berries woo The hopping robin. But when thou dost seek My lonely room, sweet Muse, Despair takes wing. Fairy Godmothers. Fairy Godmothers. I THINK the fairies to my christening came ; But they were wicked sprites and envious elves, Who brought me gall, as bitter as themselves, In tiny tankards wrought with fairy flame. They wished me love of books — each little dame — With power to read no book upon my shelves; Fair limbs for numbness ; Dead-Sea fruits by twelves, And every bitter blessing you can name. But one good elf there was, and she let fall A single drop of Poesy's wine of gold In every little tankard full of gall. So, year by year, as woes and pains grow old, The little golden drop is in them all ; But bitterer is the cup than can be told. Lost Years. Lost Years. My boyhood went : it went where went the trace Left by the pony's hoofs upon the sand ; It went where went the stream sought rod in hand ; It went where went the ice on the pond's face. Then went my youth : it went where Dawn doth chase The ballroom's lights away with pearly wand; It went where went the echoes of the band ; It went where go the nights that steal Day's place. And now my manhood goes where goes the song Of captive birds, the cry of crippled things ; It goes where goes the day that unused dies. The cage is narrow and the bars are strong In which my restless spirit beats its wings ; And round me stretch unfathomable skies. In Dreams. In Dreams. Think not I lie upon this couch of pain Eternally, and motionless as clay — Summer and winter, night as well as day — Appealing to the heartless years in vain. For now and then the dreams at night unchain My stiffen'd limbs, and lift the links that weigh As iron never weighed, and let me stray Free as the wind that ripples through the grain. Then can I walk once more, yea, run and leap ; Tread Autumn's rustling leaves or Spring's young grass, Or stand and pant upon some bracing steep ; Or, rod in hand, across the wet stones pass Some summer brook ; or on the firm skate sweep, In ceaseless circles, Winter's fields of glass. Eagles of Tiberius. Eagles of Tiberius. They say at Capri that Tiberius bound His slaves to eagles, ere he had them flung In the abysses, from the rocks that hung Beetling above the sea and the sea's sound. Slowly the eagle, struggling round and round With the gagged slave that from his talons swung, Sank through the air, to which he fiercely clung, Until the sea caught both, and both were drowned. O Eagle of the Spirit, hold thy own ; Work thy great wings, and grapple to the sky ; Let not this shackled body drag thee down Into that stagnant sea where, by-and-by, The ethereal and the clayey both must drown, Bound by a link that neither can untie ! A Snails' Derby A Snails' Derby. Once, in this Tuscan garden, noon's huge ball So slowly crossed the sky above my head, As I lay idle on my dull wheeled bed, That, sick of Day's inexorable crawl, I set some snails a-racing on the wall, With their striped shells upon their backs, instead Of motley jockeys — black, white, yellow, red, And watched them till the twilight's tardy fall. And such my life, as years go one by one : A garden where I lie beyond the flowers, And where the snails outrace the creeping sun. For me there are no pinions to the hours ; Compared with them, the snails like racers run : Wait but Death's night, and, lo! the great ball lowers. River Babble. 7 River Babble. 1. The wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase Away Despair from many a wingless day ; And in the corners of my heart I pray That they may last, or leave at least some trace. Yet would I tear them all, could that replace The fly-rod in my hand, this eve of May; And watch the paper fragments float away Into oblivion, on a trout-stream's face. Thou fool, thou fool ! thou weary, crippled fool ! Thou nevermore wilt leap from stone to stone Where rise the trout in every rocky pool ; Thou nevermore wilt stand at dusk alone Beside the humming waters, in the cool, Where dance the flies, and make the trout thy own ! 8 River Babble. River Babble. ii. And yet I think — if ever years awoke My limbs to motion, so that I could stand Again beside a river, rod in hand, As Evening spreads his solitary cloak — That I would leave the little speckled folk Their happy life — their marvellous command Of stream's wild ways — and break the cruel wand, To let them cleave the current at a stroke, As I myself once could. Oh, it were sweet To ride the running ripple of the wave, As long ago, when wanes the long day's heat ; Or search, in daring headers, what gems pave The river-bed, until the bold hands meet, In depths of beryl, what the tricked eyes crave ! Twilight. Twilight. A sudden pang contracts the heart of Day, As fades the glory of the sunken sun. The bats replace the swallows one by one ; The cries of playing children die away. Like one in pain, a bell begins to sway; A few white oxen, from their labour done, Pass ghostly through the dusk ; the crone that spun Beside her door, turns in, and all grows grey. And still I lie, as I all day have lain, Here in this garden, thinking of the time Before the years of helplessness and pain ; Or playing with the fringes of a rhyme, Until the yellow moon, amid her train Of throbbing stars, appears o'er yonder lime. io The Sundial. The Sundial. The sun is shining through a hot white veil ; And round the faded sundial, on the face Of this old Tuscan house, whose narrow space Prisons my life, the pointing shade creeps pale. More sluggish than the dusty, sun-baked snail On the same wall, it keeps its gnawing pace, The shadow of a shade, faint as the trace Of Life's lost pleasures, up the dull old scale. Thou shade of woe, that creep'st at Fate's command, Say, must the body wait till it be dead To quit this numbing stretcher of disease? Oh, is there no Isaiah in the land, To raise me from this miserable bed, And make the shadow leap the ten degrees ? The Sundial. ii The Sundial. ii. No, there is no tall prophet at my call, Flame-eyed, imperious, doomed to wooden saws, To stretch his rod athwart eternal laws, And juggle with the shadow on the wall. No Ahaz' sundial this. The earth's dumb ball, Through the blind heaven of effect and cause Rolls on and on ; — and on, without a pause, The shadow creeps, to merge in Night's great pall. Then list, ye hours. Since it is writ on high That none shall help me in my silent fight, Creep but for me, and fast for others fly. So shall I lie content, and deem things right, And heave at most a wistful, waiting sigh For Death's unstarred but hospitable night. 12 King Christmas. King Christmas. Now old King Christmas, bearded hoary-white, Comes with his holly and carouse and noise, Barons of beef, mince pies, and wassail joys, And flame surrounds the pudding blue and bright ; And now the fir-trees, as he comes in sight, Acclaimed by eager blue-eyed girls and boys, Burst into tinsel fruit and glittering toys, And turn into a pyramid of light. I love, in fancy, still to see them all, Those happy children round the dazzling tree That fills the room with scents of fir and wax; For still I love that life's sweet things should fall Into the lap of others ; though, for me, The gift of Christmas is but pain that racks. Elfin Skates. 13 Elfin Skates. 1. They wheeled me up the snow-cleared garden way, And left me where the dazzling heaps were thrown; And as I mused on winter sports once known, Up came a tiny man to where I lay. He was six inches high ; his beard was grey As silver frost ; his coat and cap were brown, Of mouse's fur ; while two wee skates hung down From his wee belt, and gleamed in winter's ray. He clambered up my couch, and eyed me long. " Show me thy skates," said I ; "for once, alas ! I too could skate. What pixie mayst thou be?" " I am the king," he answered, " of the throng Called Winter Elves. We live in roots, and pass The summer months asleep. Frost sets us free." 14 Elfin Skates. Elfin Skates. ii. "We find by moonlight little pools of ice, Just one yard wide," the imp of winter said ; "And skate all night, while mortals are in bed, In tiny circles of our elf device; " And when it snows we harness forest mice To wee bark sleighs, with lightest fibrous thread, And scour the woods ; or play all night instead With snowballs large as peas, well patted thrice. " But is it true, as I have heard them say, That thou canst share in winter games no more, But best motionless, year in, year out ? "That must be hard. To-day I cannot stay, But I'll return each year, when all is hoar, And tell thee when the skaters are about." To my Tortoise Chronos. 15 To my Tortoise Chronos. Thou vague dumb crawler with the groping head, As listless to the sun as to the showers, Thou very image of the wingless hours Now creeping past me with their feet of lead ; For thee and me the same small garden bed Is the whole world ; the same half life is ours ; And year by year, as Fate restricts my powers, I grow more like thee, and the soul grows dead. No, Tortoise : from thy like in days of old Was made the living lyre ; and mighty strings Spanned thy green shell with pure vibrating gold. The notes soared up, on strong but trembling wings, Through ether's lower zones ; then growing bold, Spurned earth for ever and its wingless things. II. Dramatic Scenes and Ballads, Thc Bride of Porphyrion. ig The Bride of Porphyrion. [A.D. 300.] DlOCLEA. Pass on, pass on ; go seek thy lair, lone man, If neighbouring lair thou hast. Night falls ; and God, For whom thou once didst snap all human ties, Requires thy evening prayer. Porphyrion. Oh, if I stop Upon my path, and bandy words with woman — I who for years have shunned man, woman, child, But woman most — I would not have thee think, In error, that thy old familiar voice, Which seems to come from out the past, has called Emotion back to life, or that I care To take advantage of the freak of chance Which brings us face to face, and makes us stand Each like a spectre in the other's eyes. But I suspect thee of a rash design, Abhorrent to the Christian ; and I ask, Woman, once more, what brings thee here at dusk — Here by the deep lone Nile, when rise the mists Heavy with death, when prowl devouring beasts, And when God's lonely dweller in the waste Alone has naught to fear ? 2o The Bride of Porphyrion. DlOCLEA. What brings me here ? The Nile flower now is closing with the day; The Nile bird hastens to her bulrush nest ; All Nature that is not of night and evil Is seeking rest ; and why should not I too, If I am weary, find repose at dusk Where rolls the deep dark stream ? Porphyrion. Because the Lord, Through my unworthy voice, has bid thee quit This perilous brink, and bear such heavy load As He, whom none may judge, may choose to heap Upon thy head. DlOCLEA. Resume thy path, lone man- Resume thy path in peace. Oh, thou art rash To linger out this meeting of dead souls ! Art thou not that Porphyrion who escaped Into the waste, to shun the sight of woman, However pure and spotless she might be? Then leave me to myself: go seek thy lair, And leave me to the darkness and the night ; Else will I tell thee in one monstrous word What she now is, who once was Dioclea, And make thy desert-nurtured chastity Shrink back in fear as from a gust from hell ! TyE Bride of Porphyrion. 21 PORPHYRION. Oh, I have wrestled with the fiend too long, And placed my heel too oft upon his neck, To fear contamination from thy breath ! I care not what thou wast, nor what thou art, Now that my soul is safe, and that long years Of ruthless castigation of the flesh Have put me out of reach of woman's snare ; — But, as a Christian servant of the Lord, I may not let thee do the thing thou wouldst, And which God hates. Thy soul is on the brink Of the abyss ; and God now bids me stretch My hand to save it. DlOCLEA. Oh, not thine, not thine ! The wanton hand that broke the precious vessel Shall not attempt to mend it. Porphyrion. What I did Upon that day, I did at God's command. DlOCLEA. Upon my bridal morn my father's house Was full of song ; my heart was full of sun, Yea, and of earnest love and brave intent ; Less snowy was the linen I had woven 22 The Bride of Porphyrion. With my own hands for thee ; less fresh the wreaths The bridesmaids still were twining ; and less pure The gold of bridal gifts which guest-friends brought, Than was the heart that waited to be thine. Porphyrion. Upon thy bridal morn my heart was filled With doubt and fear. My hounded spirit groped Like one who fears pursuers in the dark, And knows no issue. Yea, within my breast, Like captive eagles in a cage too narrow, The love of God, the love of thee, did fight. I cursed the perilous lustre of thine eyes ; I cursed thy smile and laugh ; and cursed myself That loathed them not. The sounds of mirth and song That filled the house, fell grating on my ear ; The nuptial cakes smacked bitter in my mouth, Ay, worse than gall ; the dewy bridal wreaths Stank in my nostrils, while an inner voice Kept thundering in my soul : " Away, away ! The howling waste awaits thee. Not for thee Are love and kiss of woman ; not for thee Are hearth and home, and kith and kin and friend ; But scourge and shirt of hair ! " DlOCI.EA. And like a thief, After the priest had blessed us, and before The feast was over, thou didst skulk away, Tjie Bride of Porphyrion. 23 And all at once convert the sound of song Into the hum of pity and derision. I sat alone upon my empty bed, Wrapped in the double gloom of night and woe. The pillars of my faith in human good Had given way ; the roof had fallen in Upon my life. Oh, how I cursed the night For dragging out its black and silent creep ! And when dawn came, oh ! how I cursed the dawn For its intrusive stare ! And yet that night Was but the first of many equal nights ; That dawn was but the first of many dawns In ushering in a loathed and lonely day. I held aloof from every happier woman, Suspiciously and silently to brood ; Grudging to one her husband's look of love, And to the next the infant at her breast ; Gruding to all their house, their home, their hearth, Their dignity, their duties, and their cares ; And, shunning, I was shunned, and, as it were, Marked out for future shame. Porphyrion. If like a thief I stole away unseen, oh ! it was not To spend that night in any rival's arms ! Rock, hard and wind-swept, was my marriage bed ; The wilderness my bride ; the starry sky My roof ; the distant, interrupted howl 24 The Bride of Porphyrion. Of beasts of prey, my nuptial lullaby. Before me lay the waste, strewn here and there With ribs of men and camels, or the wreck Of perished cities, yea, and thirst and pain In vaguely measured sum. But in my soul The voice of thunder cried : " Push on, push on Into the waste, Porphyrion ! thou art still Too near to human haunts, too far from God ! " And I pushed on ; and in an empty tomb In a deserted city of the dead I made my lair, alone with stones and God, Living off locusts and such scanty herbs As grew in clefts of rock and empty wells. Oh, what a silence, what a loneliness ! The temple columns and the huge carved stones Cast long black shadows on the sun-baked sand In endless rows ; and through the livelong day No moving shadow crossed them save my own, As, like a leper whom his sores have doomed To lead the lonely life, I prowled for food. Oh, it was hard ! For, knowing that the fiend Would come ere long to scare and tempt me back To human haunts, I sought with prayer and scourge, And thirst and hunger and restricted sleep, To arm myself against him and his strength. And come he did. lie prowled at first by night, Shaped as a roaring lion, round and round My lonely cell ; but his re-echoing roar 1 leterred me not, nor stopped a single prayer. And then he came with soft, insidious step, ^Tiie Bride of Porphyrion. 25 During my sleep, and strove to tempt the flesh In woman's guise — yea, in thy very shape — And sought to lure me to caress and kiss, Taking thy face, thy eyes, thy very voice, In all their beauty and their blandishment ; But I defied him, and he howling fled, And changed his plan. He made the solid ground Lurch ever and anon beneath my feet ; He made me shiver in the blazing sun With mortal cold ; and sometimes, in the dusk, He made the huge stone heads of sphinxes nod And gibber as I passed them. Oh, for years I wrestled with him in the awful waste : But I o'eicame his strength. DlOCLEA. And dost thou think That I, in that worse waste, which was not strewn Like thine with stones, but with the wreck of hopes And wreck of love, was not sought out by fiends As well as thou ?— Ay, ay, they came, the fiends ; They whispered in my ear that I was young, And that my youth was passing unenjoyed ; They whispered in my ear that I was fair — Fairer than any other, far or near, And that the beauty that, a fool had spurned Would wane before its time. They said: " Look up ! Thou mournest Love, whom thou believest dead, And Love, hard by, is waiting for one word, One movement of encouragement, one glance. 26 The Bride of Porphyrion. Give but the signal, and the lonely one Whom maid and matron scorn, and who now holds Suspiciously aloof from Life and Joy, Will be a very empress new enthroned, And waste her life no more." But, oh ! I clung To the dull honour of my broken life ; I struggled with the tempters long and hard ; I said unto myself that after all Thou might'st at last return to me, and strove With all my strength to keep me pure for thee. But years went by, and still thou didst not come ; And round and round my heart the Tempter prowled, Nearer and ever nearer with new arts, New wiles, new snares, new whispers, day by day, And proved at last the stronger of the two. 1 fled my father's house for evermore ; I loved, was loved ; I saw luxurious cities Where pleasure triumphed— Alexandria, Antioch, and Athens : ay, and even Rome- Courted where'er I went, until the day When he proved false, and when once more I sat Upon my lonely bed and prayed for dawn. And yet I loved again ; yea, twice and thrice. Down, down the winding stair of love I went, Until the slippery and precipitous steps Became so dark and noisome all at once, That I threw up my arms and shrieked in fear. But all my strength was gone, and heaven's faint light Too far above my head. Oh, since we two Last saw each other's eyes, not thou alone ■» The Bride of Porphyrion. 27 Hast felt the scourge alight upon thy back ; Not thou alone hast known the howling waste ; For I have felt that nine times knotted scourge Which makes the soul and not the body writhe, Descending on me fiercely, and have found In men's embrace a loneliness more dread, A desert more terrific and more bare, Than any which thy bruised, unsandalled foot Has ever trodden yet. Porphyrion. The worse for thee. I freed thee from the weight of human ties ; 1 pointed out the path that leads to heaven Across life's wreck ; and if, instead of God, Thou chosest Satan, what is that to me ? Thou might'st have built a mansion for thy soul Upon the ruins of an earthly home ; Thou might'st, like me, have wrestled with the fiend, And felt the pride of bruising with thy heel The Tempter's head ; thou might'st, like me, have felt The fierce voluptuous pleasure of the scourge ; Nay, even, like myself, thou might'st with time Have sought to snatch the crown from Heaven's hand, The glorious crown of Martyrdom ; for if Upon this day thou meetest me so near The haunts of men, it is because I wait For some fresh outburst of the Pagan's wrath Against our sect, to court the lingering death. 28 The Bride of Porphyrion. But, lo ! we waste our words; for I have warned And summoned thee to leave the perilous brink Of this dark circling water ; and if thou Still cleavest to thy heathenish design Of self-destruction, not upon my soul Shall fall the wrath of Heaven for the deed. Once more I bid thee, woman, leave the brink : For, see, the night hath come ; and, as thou sayest, God needs my evening prayer. Dioclea. Ay, ay, the night Hath wrapped us round : I scarce can see the flowers That glimmered on the current ; though I hear The sweet faint rustling of the stream-bent reeds. Pass on thy way, lone man — pass on in peace ; There is no link between us, and no love. Go find thy rest, as I at last find mine ; And leave me here, beside the deep lone Nile, Where woe will sink, and haply leave no trace. Adalhita. 29 Adalhita. Adalhita. A fitful muttering, as of souls in pain, Comes through the open casement from the night, With sultry storm-gusts, ever and again, Like evil inarticulate. No light Comforts these towers, round which the moon-struck wolves Have howled three nights, and, since three days, a flight Of birds of evil augury revolves : No light, save when a flash of dumb sheet-lightning Displays the moat, where rotting weed dissolves, And shows the water-snakes, one moment bright'ning Their twistings as they play. What makes me feel As if there were an evil Power tight'ning About these battlements ?— It seems to wheel Nearer and nearer round them in the air — A Power to which no Christian soul may kneel, But unto which I yearn as ne'er in prayer I yearned to God. The night is black as pitch. I cannot pray, but crouch with loosened hair. By the last flash which gave a dext'rous twitch (Just off and on again) to Midnight's cloak, I saw nine witches in the castle ditch ; And now I hear them singing ; and their croak Is sweeter in my fascinated ear Than sweetest lute. 30 Adalhita. Witches. In the deep black moat, Where the rank weeds float, And the snakes with a dumb speed glide, We swim nine times Round thy walls, and the crimes That thy towers in the darkness hide. And we sing, as we swim, Thy nuptial hymn, To the tune that the tempest hums : For, riding a wind Of souls that sinned, Thy wonderful Bridegroom comes. And baleful to men as a were-wolPs bite Be the seed he shall cast in thy lap this night ; And nine times nine be the spells we throw On the nine mad moons that shall watch it grow With a dumb white face of fright. Adalhita. The spirits they convoke Are beating up the storm ; and now I hear The thunder come in ever louder growls ; While now and then a vampire's shriek sounds near. All round the castle there are prowling ghouls : For now the soulless corpses all awake, And are as restless as the fleshless souls That mutter round ine. •» Adalhita. 31 Now the great peals shake The walls from base to turret. — Is it he Who circles round them, while I crouch and quake With heavy drops of sweat ? — I cannot see In the thick darkness his terrific form, But seem to feel him grope and seek for me. How fast the running finger of the storm Scribbles its fiery cabalistic zeds On Midnight's page ! I writhe as would a worm Beneath bird's talon. Over human heads Such thunder never crashed ; and in each peal, Louder and louder as the echo spreads, I hear my name. Voice. Adalhita ! Adalhita ! Adalhita. O thou to whom I kneel, And not to God, thy handmaid hears : she hears. I know thee not ; I see thee not ; I feel Only that thou art coming. In my ears Thy mighty wings are like a rushing sea Churned by the tempest. As their roaring nears, I cower. Lord, who art thou ? Voice. I am he The Saracens call Eblis, and the Franks Entitle Satan ; he who holds the keys 32 Adalhita. Of Thought's dark rooms ; the Rebel in whose ranks Those sullen angels serve, whose dewless wings Cast evil as their shadow ; he whose flanks Pant with eternal lust ; whose palace rings With an eternal Never, deep beneath Etna's deep fiery roots. Adalhita. Thy presence flings Dark glare, like glowing lava. At thy breath I quail. Voice. Across the horror of the night I come, O Adalhita, although death Hath not yet made thee mine. Three nights my flight Hath circled round these towers, for thou hast shot Into my heart a ray of blackest light. Thy sinister dark loveliness hath got Possession of my being. Evil clay, I love thee. Adalhita. Spare me. Oh, thy breath is hot As a volcano's. Leave me ; whirl away Back into night. Thy limbs are of dark fire. Voice. No, thou art mine. I pant by night and day For thy fell beauty with as fierce desire Adalhita. 3 As any of the waterless who fight Round hell's mock springs. In the great vaults of ire, The sleepless caverns whose eternal night Is lit but by the pools of molten stone, Where bathe the lost, and where, in the red light, Great shadows dance, I sit upon my throne Of black basalt, as on a rock, and watch The Lakes of Torment, taciturn and lone, Craving thee mine. And now . . . Adalhita. Flesh is no match For thy terrific substance. Thy first kiss Will shrivel up my breath. My soul will catch Eternal fire ! Voice. I hold thee ! . . . Ah, with this I mock immense Gehenna ! Adalhita. Ha, the first Unutterable clasp ! . . . My scorched limbs hiss In an embrace that nature cannot burst. Has the live lightning quivered through my frame To make me big with fire, or God's Accurst Filled me with hell ? . . . I swoon in night and flame. ~> 34 The Mandolin. The Mandolin. [a.d. 1559.] Sit nearer to my bed. Have I been rambling? I can ill command The sequence of my thoughts, though words come fast. A fire is in my head And in my veins, like hell's own flame fast fanned. No sleep for eighty nights. It cannot last. The Pope ere long, perhaps ere close of day, Will have a scarlet hat to give away. Good priest, dost hear a sound, A faint far sound as of a mandolin ? Thou hearest naught ? Well, well ; it matters not. I, who was to be crowned At the next Conclave ! I was safe to win ; And 'twill be soon : Caraffa's step has got So tottering. O God, that I should miss The prize within my grasp, and end like this ! Three little months ago What cardinal was so robust as I ? And now the rings drop off my fingers lean ! I have a deadly foe, Who steals away my life till I shall die ; A foe whom well I know, though all unseen, Unseizable, unstrikable ; he lurks Ever at hand, and my destruction works. The Mandolin. 35 Thou thinkest I am mad ? Not mad ; no, no ; but kept awake to death, And sent by daily inches into hell. Slow starving were less bad, Or measured poison, or the hard-drawn breath And shrivelling muscles of a wasting spell. I tell thee, Father, I've been months awake, Spent with the thirst that sleep alone can slake. O holy, holy Sleep, Thou sweet but over-frightenable power ! Thou whom a tinkle scares or whispered word ! Return, return and creep Over my sense, and in this final hour Lay on my lids the kiss so long deferred. But, ah ! it cannot be ; and I shall die Awake, I know ; the foe is hovering nigh. Attend : I'll tell thee all — I tried to steal his life ; and, in return, Night after night he steals my sleep away. Oh, I would slowly maul His body with the pincers, or would burn His limbs upon red embers, or would flay The skin from off him slowly, if he fell Into my hands, though I should sicken hell ! The mischief all began With Claudia, whom thou knewest ; my own niece. 36 The Mandolin. My dowered ward, brought up in my own home. I had an old pet plan That she should wed Duke Philip, and increase The number of my partisans in Rome. Oh, they were matched; for he had rank and power, And she rare beauty and a princely dower. With infinite delight I saw her beauty come, and watched its growth With greater rapture than a miser knows, Who in the silent night Counts up his growing treasure, and is loath To close the lid, and seek his lone repose. And, long before her beauty was full-blown, Men called her worthy of a ducal crown. But as her beauty grew, Her lip would often curl, her brow contract, With ominous impatience of control ; The least compulsion drew Rebellious answers ; all respect she lacked ; The spirit of resistance filled her soul : She took not to Duke Philip, as the year For marriage neared ; and I began to fear. Give me again to drink : There is a fierce excitement in my brain, And speech relieves me; but my strength sinks fasL The end is near, I think. ■» The Mandolin. ^j And I would tell thee all, that not in vain May be thy absolution at the last. Where was it I had got ? I lose the thread Of thought at times, and know not what I've said. Ay, now I recollect. There was a man who hung about me ever, One Hannibal Petroni, bastard born, Whom I did half suspect Of making love to Claudia. He was clever, And had the arts and ways that should adorn A better birth ; but from the first I hated His very sight ; and hatred ne'er abated. He played with rare, rare skill Upon the mandolin ; his wrist was stronger Than that of any player I have known ; And with his quivering quill He could sustain the thrilling high notes longer Than others could, and drew a voice-like tone Of unexampled clearness from the wire, VVhich often made me, while I loathed, admire. For 'tis a wondrous thing, The mandolin, when played with cunning hand, And charms the nerves till pleasure grows too sharp ; Now mimicking the string Of a guitar, now aping at command The viol or the weird /Eolian harp. The sound now tinkles, now vibrates, now comes Faint, thin, and thread-like ; 'tis a gnat that hums. 38 The Mandolin. And he would often come On breezeless moonlit nights of May and June, And play beneath these windows, or quite near, When every sound in Rome Had died away, and I abhorred his tune ; For well I knew it was for Claudia's ear ; And I would pace my chamber while he played, And, in my heart, curse moon and serenade. How came this thing about ? My mind grows hazy and my temples swell. Give me more drink ! Oh, I remember now. One morning I found out That they were corresponding — letters fell Into my hands. It was a crushing blow ; My plans were crumbling. In my fear and wrath I said, "Why wait? Remove him from thy path." It's easy here in Rome, Provided you are liberal with the price ; The willing Tiber sweeps all trace away. Yet, ere I sent him home To heaven or hell, I think I warned him twice To go his ways ; but he preferred to stay. He braved me in his rashness, and I said, " Let his destruction be on his own head." When Claudia learned his death, What a young tigress ! I can see her now The Mandolin. 39 With eyes illumined by a haggard flame, And feel her withering breath, As in a hissing, never-ending flow She poured her awful curses on my name. 'Twas well I kept her close ; for she had proofs, And would have howled them from the very roofs. It is an ugly tale, And must be told ; but what was I to do? I wanted peace, not war ; but one by one I saw my efforts fail. She was unmanageable ; and she drew Her fate upon herself — ay, she alone. I placed her in a convent, where they tried All means in vain. She spurned her food, and died. But he, the cause of all, I know not how, has risen from the dead, And takes my life by stealing sleep away. No sooner do I fall Asleep each night, than, creeping light of tread Beneath my window, he begins to play. How well I know his touch ! It takes my life Less quickly, but more surely, than a knife. Now 'tis a rapid burst Of high and brilliant melody, which ceases As soon as it has waked me with a leap ; And now a sound, at first 40 The Mandolin. As faint as a gnat's humming, which increases And creeps between the folded thoughts of sleep, Tickling the brain, and keeping in suspense, Through night's long hours, the o'er-excited sense. Oh, I have placed my spies All round the house, and offered huge rewards To any that may see him ; but in vain. The cunning rogue defies The bestdaid plan, and fears nor traps nor swords ; But, scarce my eyes are closed, begins again His artful serenade. Oh, he is sly, And loves to fool the watchman and the spy ! But I should find a way To catch him yet, if my retainers had A little faith, and helped me as they ought. I overheard one say, " Mark me : the Cardinal is going mad ; He hears a mandolin where there is naught." Ay, that's Petroni's skill. He sends the sound Straight to my ear, unheard by those around ! Once, on a moonlit night, I caught a glimpse of him ; the villain sat Beneath my window, on the garden wall ; And in the silvery light I saw his mandolin. Then, like a cat, I crept downstairs, with fierce intent to fall Upon and throttle him. I made a rush ; I seized him by the throat. It was a bush. The Mandolin. 41 But I have talked o'ermuch ; And something like a drowsiness descends Upon my eyelids with a languid weight. Oh, would it were the touch Of sweet returning sleep, to make amends For long desertion, ere it be too late ! My fevered pulse grows calm ; my heated brow Aches less and less, and throbs no longer now. Sleep, O gentle Sleep, I feel thee near ; thou hast returned at last. It was that draught of soothing hellebore. 1 feel sweet slumber creep Across each aching sense, as in the past, And consciousness is fading more and more. I care not to awake again ; let Death, Whenever Sleep shall leave me, take my breath. Give ear ! give ear ! give ear ! 1 hear him ; he is coming ; it is he ! He plays triumphant strains, faint, far away. Ye fools, do ye not hear ? Oh, we shall catch him yet, and you shall see A year of hell compressed into a day. Bring me my clothes, and help me out of bed. Oh, I can stand ; I'm weak, but not yet dead. Bring me my scarlet cloak And scarlet stockings. — No, they're dyed with blood. Oh, you may laugh ! but it's beyond a doubt : The dyers let them soak, 42 The Mandolin. In every street, in murder-reddened mud. It is the only dye that won't wash out. The Pope is dead ; Caraffa's dead at last. I'm wanted at the Conclave. Dress me fast. Who dares to hold me down ? I'm papable. 1 By noon we must convene ; Bring me my clothes, and help me quick to rise. When I've the triple crown Safe on my head, I'll sweep the cesspool clean. What's all that muttering? Speak out loud, ye spies ! There's a conspiracy at work, I know, To keep me from the Conclave — but I'll go. The Papacy is lost. Lost, wholly lost. The Papal keys, all black With rust and dirt, won't turn the lock of heaven. What's that ? What's that ? The Host ? There's poison in the Wafer — take it back ! I'll spit it out ! I'll rather die unshriven ! Help, Claudia, help ! Where's Claudia ? Where's she fled ? They're smothering me with pillows in my bed ! 1 Eligible to the Papacy. Sister Mary. 43 Sister Mary van der Deck. [A.D. I560.] In her work there is no flagging, And her slightness seems of steel ; And her face and eyes and motions, Tried by countless nights of watching, Nor fatigue nor pain reveal. Yet the Sisters say she eats not, Spurning food as ne'er did saint, And they murmur, " She is nourished By a miracle of Heaven ; God allows her not to faint." Through the darkened wards she passes On her rounds from bed to bed ; And the sick who wait her coming Cease their moaning, smiling faintly As they hear her light quick tread. Through the gabled lanes she hurries ; And the ribald men-at-arms Hush their mirth, and, stepping backward, Let her pass to soothe some death-bed, Safe from insults and alarms. 44 Sister Mary. And the priests and monks and townsfolk Whom she passes, greet her sight With a strange, respectful pleasure As she nears in dark blue flannel And huge cap of spotless white. Oh, the busy Flemish city Knows its Sister Mary well ; And the very children show her To the stranger as she passes, And her story all can tell : How she won a lasting glory, Cleaving to the dread bedside, When the Plague with livid pinions Lighted on the crowded alleys, And all others fled or died : How alone she made men listen In their fear, and do her will ; Making help and making order, When the customary rulers Trembled helpless and stood still : How she had the corpses buried When they choked canal and street ; When alone the shackled convicts, Goaded on with pike and halberd, Cared to near with quaking feet. Sister Mary. 45 But those days of fear are over, And the pure canal reflects Barges decked with pots of flowers And long rows of tile-faced gables, Which no breeze of death infects. And once more the city prospers Through the cunning of its guilds ; While the restless shuttles clatter, And in peace the busy Fleming Weaves and tans and brews and builds ; And the bearded Spanish troopers, Sitting idly in the shade, Toss their dice with oath and rattle, Or crack jokes with girls that pass them, Laughing-eyed and unafraid. II. Sister Mary, Sister Mary, In thy soul there is some change ; For thy face, the while thou watchest By a pale young Spanish soldier, Works with struggle strong and strange. Thou hast watched a hundred death-beds, Ever calm without dismay, Fighting like a steady fighter, While the shade of Death pressed onward, Night on night and day on day. 46 Sister Mary. And when Death had proved the stronger, Thou wouldst heave a sigh at most, And then turn to some new moaner, Ready to resume the battle, Just as steady at thy post. Now thy soul is filled with anguish Strange and wild, thou know'st not why ; While a voice unknown and inward Seems to whisper, far and faintly, " If he dies, thou too wilt die." Many months has he been lying In thy ward, and rises not ; Youth and strength avail him nothing ; Growing daily whiter, whiter, Dying of men know not what. And he murmurs, "Sister Mary, Now the end is nearing fast ; Thou hast nursed me like God's angel ; But the hand of God is on me, And thy care must end at last. " I have few, few days remaining ; Now I scarce can draw my breath See my hand : no blood is in it ; And I feel like one who slowly, owly, slowly bleeds to death." Sister Mary. 47 And his worn and heavy eyelids Close again as if in sleep ; While thou lookest on his features With a long and searching anguish In thy eyes that dare not weep. Sister Mary, Sister Mary, Watch him closer, closer still ! There be things within the boundless Realm of Horror unsuspected — Things that slowly, slowly kill ! In his face there is no colour, And his hand is ivory-white ; But upon his throat is something Like a small red stain or puncture, Something like a leech's bite. Sister Mary, Sister Mary, Dost thou see that small red stain ? Hast thou never noted something Like it on the throats of others, Whom thy care has nursed in vain ? Have no rumours reached thee, Sister, Of a Thing that haunts these wards When the scanty sleep thou takest Cheats the sick of the protection That thy vigilance affords ? 4 48 Sister Mary. When, at night, the ward is silent And the night-lamp's dimness hides, And the nurse on duty slumbers In her chair with measured breathing — Then it glides, and glides, and glides, Like a woman's form, new risen From the grave with soundless feet, Clad in something which the shadows Of the night-lamp render doubtful Whether robe or winding-sheet. And its eyes seem fixed and sightless, Like the eyeballs of the dead; But it gropes not and moves onward Sure and silent, seeking something, In the ward, from bed to bed. And if any, lying sleepless, Sees it, he becomes as stone ; Terror glues his lips together, While his eyes are forced to follow All its movements, one by one. And he sees it stop, and hover Round a bed, with wavering will, Like a bat which, ere it settles, Flits in circles ever smaller, Nearer, nearer, nearer still. Sister Mary. Then it bends across the sleeper, Restless in the sultry night, And begins to fan him gently With its garment, till his slumber Groweth deep and dreamless quite ! And its corpse-like face unstiffens, And its dead eyes seem to gloat, As, approaching and approaching, It applies its mouth of horror Slowly, firmly, to his throat. Sister Mary, Sister Mary, Has no rumour told thee this ? What if he whose life thou lovest Like thine own, and more, were dying Of that long, terrific kiss ? III. From the hospital's arched window, Open to the summer air, You can see the monks in couples All returning home at sunset Through the old cathedral square. On the steps of the cathedral, In the weak, declining sun, Sit the beggars and the cripples ; While faint gusts of organ-pealing Tell that vespers have begun. 49 50 Sister Mary. Slowly creeps the flood of shadow Up the steps and sculptured front, Driving back the yellow sunshine On each pinnacle and buttress, Which the twilight soon makes blunt. Slowly evening grasps the city, And the square grows still and lone ; No one passes, save, it may be, Up the steps and through the portal, Some stray monk or tottering crone. In this room, which seems the study Of the hospital's chief leech, There is no one ; but the twilight Makes all objects seem mysterious, Like a conscious watcher each. Here the snakes whose venom healeth Stand in jars in hideous file ; While the skulls that crown the book-shelves Seem to grin ; and, from the ceiling, Hangs the huge stuffed crocodile. Here be kept the drugs and cordials Which the Jew from Syria brings ; And perchance drugs yet more precious, Melted topaz, pounded ruby, Such as save the lives of kings. Sister Mary. 51 All is silent in the study, But the door-hinge creaks anon, And a woman enters softly, Seeking something that seems hidden — One unnaturally wan. What she seeks is not in phials, Nor in jars, but in a book ; And she mutters as she searches Through the book-shelves with a curious Brooding hurry in her look. And she finds the book, and takes it To the window for more light ; And she reads a passage slowly With constrained and hissing breathing, And dark brow contracted tight. " Most of them" it says, " are corpses That have lain beneath the moon, And that quit their graves at midnight, Prowling round to prey on sleepers ; But the daybreak scares them soon. " But the worst, called soulless bodies, Plague the world but now and then ; They have died in some great sickness, But, reviving in the moonbeams, Rise once more and mix with men. 52 Sister Mary. ii And they act and feci like others, Never guessing they be dead. Common human food they love not; But at night, impelled by hunger, In their sleep they quit their bed; " And they fasten on some sleeper, Feeding on his living blood ; Who, when life has left his body, Must in turn arise, and, prowling, Seek the like accursed food." And the book escapes her fingers, And she casts her down to pray ; But convulsions seize arid twist her, And delirious ramblings mingle With the prayers she tries to say. In her mouth there is a saltness ; On her lips there is a stain ; In her soul there is a horror ; In her vitals there is something More like raging thirst than pain. And she cries, " O God, I knew it ; Have I not, at dead of night, Waking up, looked round and found me On the ledge of roofs and windows, In my shift, and shrieked with fright ? Sister Mary. 53 "Have I not, O God of Mercy, Passed by shambles in the street, And stopped short, in monstrous craving, For the crimson blood that trickled In the gutter at my feet ? "Did I not, at last Communion, Cough the holy Wafer out ? Blood I suck ; but Christ's flesh chokes me. O my God, my God, vouchsafe me Some strong light in this great doubt !" And she sinketh crushed and prostrate In the twilight on the floor, While the darkness grows around her, And her quick and laboured breathing Grows convulsive more and more. IV. Sister Mary, all is quiet In thy wards, and midnight nears : Seek the scanty rest thou needest ; Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest : All is hushed and no one fears. But, though midnight, Sister Mary Thinks it not yet time to go ; And the night-lamps, shining dimly, Show her vaguely in the shadow Moving softly to and fro. 54 Sister Mary. What is Sister Mary doing, Flitting round one sleeper's bed ; Is she sprinkling something round it, Something white as wheaten flour, And on which she will not tread? And at last the work is over, And she goeth to her rest ; And she sleeps at once, exhausted By long labour, and, it may be, By strong struggles in her breast. Nothing breaks upon the stillness Of the night, except, afar, Some faint shouts of ending revel Or of brawling, in the quarters Where the Spanish soldiers are. Time wades slowly through the darkness, Till at last it reaches day; And the city's many steeples, Buried in the starless heaven, Grow distinct in sunless grey. And the light wakes Sister Mary, And she dresses in strange haste, Giving God no prayer, and leaving On her bed the beads and crosses That should dangle from her waist. Sister Mary. 55 And with unheard steps she hurries Through the ward where all sleep on, To the bed on which is lying He who day by day is growing More inexorably wan. All around the bed is sprinkled Something white, like thin fresh snow, Where a naked foot has printed In the night a many footprints, Sharp and clear from heel to toe. Sister Mary, Sister Mary, Dost thou know thy own small foot ? Would it fit those marks that make thee Turn more pale than thy own paleness, If upon them it were put ? And the dying youth smiles faintly Pleasure's last accorded smile ; And he murmurs as he hears her, " Sister Mary, I am better ; Let me hold thy hand a while. " Sister Mary, I would tell thee Fain one thing, before I die ; For a dying man may utter What another must keep hidden In the fastness of a sigh. 56 Sister Mary. "Sister Mary, I have loved thee — Is it sin to tell thee this ? And I dreamt — O God, be lenient, If 'tis sin — that thou didst give me On the throat a long, long kiss." Hunting the King. 57 Hunting the King. [A.D. 1792.] And the two galloped on in the twilight again, As behind them went trooping the trees ; And the rutty and darkening roads of Champagne, With their patches of wood and their patches of grain, Grew solemn and lone by degrees. Like the hurrying ghosts of two riders they rode — For the few that they met, indistinct ; And the lights that appeared, few and far-away, showed Where, to right or to left, lay a human abode ; And the stars overhead of them winked. Through the maze of cross-roads they went ever more fast, As if he who led on never doubted ; Till the other, by dint of hard spurring, at last Brought his horse alongside, and between them there passed Hurried words that were broken and shouted. "Slacken pace ! Slacken pace !" — ■" Spur him on with- out stay ! What's a horse to the saving of France ? " — ■ "Art thou sure of the place where they change the relay ? "— " At Varennes, and at twelve. Trust to me for the way ! France is saved if we get in advance ! " 58 Hunting the King. And the Postmaster Drouet once more shot ahead, Close followed by Guillaume his friend ; Never seeming to waver or doubt as he led, Or to see less distinct the invisible thread Of short-cut on short-cut without end. But the roads and the fields and the low hedges grew Every minute more lonely and dark, While his horse, in the gathering darkness, now drew, From the flint of the road, with his thundering shoe, Every minute more brilliant a spark. But he thought in his heart, " If the moon does not rise When we get to the woods, I shall doubt ; And he'll get to the army and German allies ; And the land, unprepared, will be caught by surprise, And the great Revolution stamped out." But a glow, faint at first, and then brighter, was spread In the sky, and the moon showed her face ; And the plain and the hills were lit up far and wide ; And a galloping shadow appeared at his side, And took part all at once in the race. Oh, the moon that plays tricks with the shadows she throws, Might have given that shadow the shape Of the Rider that rides us all down, friends and foes, And was now, ere their time, coming down upon those Who had trusted to God for escape. Hunting the King. 59 Hurry on, ye postillions, so royally paid, That suspect not a king and a queen ! Though ye never have heard in the course of your trade Of a thing that the doctors of Paris have made, Of a thing that they call Guillotine ! Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes, Where your fellow-postillions await ! Hurry on, hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men ! For each stride that ye take, there is one that takes ten, And that gallops like Death and like Fate ! He caught sight of a face in the dark carriage-hood As ye rolled from his door and were gone ; And he looked with a closeness that boded no good At the crumpled bank-note where that face graven stood ; Hurry on, hurry on, hurry on ! There were clouds near the moon, and they girt her about, As if trying to screen and to save ; And the darkness one moment filled Drouet with doubt ; But she baffled them all and shone brilliantly out, To abet with the light that she gave. And the stems of the corn flashed metallic and bright, And like bayonets distantly blue ; And the breeze-rippled patches of grain in the light Looked like distant battalions restrained from the fight, That a thrill of impatience ran through. 60 Hunting the King. But the patches of grain grew more scanty anon, And the road grew more hard to discern ; And they entered the lonely dark woods of Argonne, Where the moon through the branches could ill help them on, And they trampled on brushwood and fern. As they galloped, each oak, with its black knotty arm, Seemed to grab at the two like a claw ; While the air seemed all full of destruction and harm, And the one who rode second felt vaguely alarm At each shadow and shape that he saw. But the other dashed on, as with hounds on the scent, In his thundering, thundering speed, Giving neither a thought to his horse nearly spent, Nor a look to his comrade, but solely intent On a prey that was royal indeed. Did no angel of life, as he spurred yet more fast, Cry, " O God, for a slip or a stumble, That shall save from the block the heads sinking at last Into sleep, now that fear of pursuers is past, And the heads of a many more humble ? '* O God, for a doubt that shall bring to a stop, For a stone in the shoe to retard ; Or the heads in the basket of sawdust will drop Like the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop On a day that their labour is hard Hunting the King. 6i "And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain, But by tempests of iron and lead ; And manured with the blood of the nations in vain ; And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain, But a harvest of cripples and dead. " And the nations in carnage will ceaselessly strive, With a roar that disperses the clouds, Where the trains of artillery furiously drive, And the gun-wheels make ruts through the dead and the live, And the balls make the lanes in the crowds. " Let his horse break a vein or his saddle a girth ; Trip him up on the hardening mud ; For each drop from the rowel that falls to the earth, If he reaches Varennes, O my God ! will give birth To an ocean of innocent blood !" Or did spirits invisible fly by his side, And in whispers excite him and goad, And exulting foretell him the end of his ride, As his spur-mangled horse with its terrible stride One by one killed the miles of the road ? Did they cry : " Lash him on, as in lightness of heart They have ridden the people to death ; Lash him on, as the saviour of France that thou art ; Lash him on till the blood from his nostrils shall start ; Lash him on ! never think of his breath ?" 62 Hunting the King. Did they cry : " Lash him on without mercy or stay," As his arm for a moment desisted ; " Lash him on, as the quarterers did on the day When the horses of Horror were tugging away, And the live limbs of Damiens resisted ? " Lash him on, for the freedom of nations depends On the flag which at last is unfurled ! Lash him on, lash him on, till his very life ends ! Lash him on, lash him on, for the breath that he spends Is for Freedom, and France, and the world ! "So shall Kellermann's steed at Marengo be spurred When the earth by his squadrons is shaken, And the thunder of men above Heaven's is heard, And there runs from the Alps to Vesuvius the word That forces the lands to awaken. "So the couriers shall spur and the miles disappear, From the Oder, the Elbe, and the Po, When the victories follow each other so near, That the bearers of tidings are filled with a fear Lest another their tidings outdo. " Lash him on, lash him on ; and the three-coloured flag That has sprung from the black Paris gutter, Shall be carried by plain and by valley and crag, And, all riddled with bullets, a mere tattered rag, From Alhambra to Kremlin shall flutter !" Hunting the King. 63 And he lashed ; and he left his companions behind, And sped furiously on all alone, With the sinister shadow the moon had designed Flitting on just in front of him, vaguely defined, At a pace that was wild as his own. And as midnight was nearing, at last there appeared The faint lights of Varennes far ahead ; And then only it was, as he finally cleared The last miles of the road, that he suddenly feared Lest his horse should fall suddenly dead. But his horse did not drop ; and with thundering feet It dashed on to the inn of the Post ; While he shouted to all that he happened to meet, " Sound the tocsin ! the tocsin ! " all up the long street ; " Bar the bridge ! bar the bridge, or all's lost !" And the patriots crouched in the shade of the old Narrow archway, all holding their breath ; Till a carriage and four was heard coming, and rolled Slowly, heavily, in ; while the tocsin still tolled, Like a knell that anticipates death. 64 The Fiddle and the Slipper. The Fiddle and the Slipper. A Legend. In an old town, which in the Rhine Reflects quaint mediaeval towers, There stands a rich and holy shrine, Famed far and wide for wondrous powers ; An image of the Virgin Mother, More potent far than any other ; Revered for strange and sudden healings By serf and burgess, priest and lord, Ne'er thankless for a pilgrim's kneelings, And in the farthest lands adored. The figure stands within the aisle Of the immense cathedral pile ; Where languid fumes of incense float, And rolls the organ's swelling note ; Where gorgeous flecks of colour pass, And kiss the stone through tinted glass : A mild Madonna, looking down From underneath a starry crown, And standing in an azure niche Behind a grating strange and rich. So far, so good. — But in this shrine There hangs, just in the very middle, The Fiddle and the Slipper. 6= Beside the effigy divine, A fiddle. A fiddle??? Each latest pilgrim shakes his head, Whom pious steps have hither led, And questions all, with anxious face ; For 'tis indeed a puzzling riddle Why such an object as a fiddle Should be suspended in the middle Of such a very holy place. But as I know, and as the story Is greatly to the Virgin's glory, I'll tell the legend unto you, For whom 'tis peradventure new. Somewhere in the Middle Ages, — That happy time of long-shanked pages, Of troubadours and ladies fair, With hawk on wrist and golden hair ; Of lovers' philtres and of spells, Of palmers with their cockle shells, Of tourneys and of knightly prancings, Of plagues and epileptic dancings ; Of monks and nuns with morbid cravings, With visions and ecstatic ravings ; Of heretics' and witches' trials ; Of recantations and denials ; — That kindly period which exhibits So many forms of chains and gibbets, Of thumbscrews, racks, and Spanish shoes 66 The Fiddle and the Slipper. To alter men's religious views, Or touch the heart of stingy Jews ; Those good old days so picturesque, So hungry, pious, and grotesque — In that same town beside the Rhine, Where stands the venerable shrine, A fiddler dwelt of humble fame, And known as Nepomuk by name. He earned but little at the best ; For though his skill was far from middling, Few in that city's bounds possessed A taste for piping or for fiddling. But times were more than ever hard ; The very mice could find no lard. A plngue had lately swept the city, And Famine showed but little pity. The world had licked its platter clean, And grew each day more pale and lean. All had to borrow, steal, or beg. The stork who stood upon one leg Upon his dwelling's highest gable Had brought the poor musician's wife More brats than he and she were able To furnish with the means of life. The hearth was empty, all was bare ; Their only visitor was Care ; Save when, through panes of bottle green, Grim Hunger's face would come and stare ; Or ever and anon was seen Upon the threshold blank Despair. The Fiddle and the Slipper. 67 But in the trouble of his life, When even his devoted wife Was all unable to console The woe that weighed upon his soul, The luckless fiddler had a friend Foar ever ready to attend ; A friend to whom, when broken-hearted, His every feeling he imparted ; Whose voice in vain was never heard ; A friend who with him hoped and feared, By old companionship endeared ; Who, in his happier days of youth, Before he felt Care's gnawing tooth, Had at his joy exulted often, And now could soothe, assuage, and soften ; A friend who stuck through thick and thin : His comforter, — his violin. He was for ever fiddling found ; The less of food, the more of sound. — When, in that bitterest of all winters, The floating ice, in hoary splinters, Would crash and crunch, and shake and shiver, Against the pier-heads of the river ; And mighty blocks with creaks and cracks Would leap upon each other's backs ; And when, from gables and from leads, And rain-spouts shaped like dragons' heads, Hung icicles a yard in length, Resplendent in ephemeral strength, — 68 The Fiddle and the Slipper. Then ran the fingers, flew the bow, Through mazes of unuttered woe ; Until the sweat, despite the cold, Down from the player's forehead rolled. One day when things looked blacker still, (A child had died, his wife was ill) The poor musician had stolen out, Scarce knowing what he was about ; Whether to seek some chance carousal, Some christening feast, or some espousal, At which to fiddle for a penny, (Feasts in that town were far from many); Whether to supplicate or steal For those at home a scanty meal ; Or whether every hope resign, And end his misery in the Rhine ; — It happened that the narrow street Chosen at random by the feet Of the depressed and starving mortal, Led past the great cathedral portal, Where monkish sculptors, shorn and shaven, Had nightmare scenes of yore engraven ; Where squatted imps, and goblins leered, And apish faces grinned and jeered, And fiends and dwarfs and creatures weird From every nook and corner peered ; Where rows of rigid kings were seen, Each with his lean and rigid queen, The Fiddle and the Slipper. 69 And mitred saints, all skin and bone, Were roughly hewn in blackened stone. The fiddler stopped and looked a while : He felt an inner admonition, Far stronger than his own volition, To enter that great Gothic pile. The nave and aisles, in semi light, Seemed empty and deserted quite. The sheaf-like columns rose sublime, Sustaining lightly in the air A stony lacework past compare At heights where Fancy feared to climb. Upon the tombs loomed cold and pale, Recumbent in their coats of mail, The statues of once famous knights, Who, in the shade of arch and column, And in the stillness deep and solemn, Seemed resting from forgotten fights. The whole in tintless twilight lay ; Save here and there, where, far away, At some long pillared vista's close, A window like a luminous rose With blood-red petals, let a stream Of crimson light the grey redeem. The unknown impulse which had made The fiddler enter, led him on Through nave and transept, till it bade Him humbly kneel upon the stone 70 The Fiddle and the Slipper. Before the rich and holy shrine Where stood the Virgin's form divine. She stood behind the silver grating, Clad in a splendid jewelled robe, As if for adoration waiting, Her feet upon an azure globe ; And from beneath her starry crown, She looked so mildly, softly down : She seemed to say, " I know thee well ; To me thy woes and troubles tell." Was it his fancy? But he thought That on her face a smile he caught. Again ! — He thought her mantle rich Had rustled in the azure niche ! He mumbled all the prayers he knew, Half understood and very few : They served but badly to express His utter misery and distress. In his own words he tried to speak ; But his own words his wish belied ; His heart was full, his tongue was weak, Upon his lips the accents died. Then for his fiddle, as he knelt, His hand mechanically felt. At first the music sounded faint, And like the moaning wind's complaint. But as the player bolder grew, From out his instrument he drew A simple and pathetic air, 'The Fiddle and the Slipper. 71 His truest, best, and highest prayer. To her who 'neath her starry crown Into all lowly hearts looked down, He told his tale ; and not in vain ; For lo, the image smiled again ! Again against the azure globe He heard the rustling of her robe. Before his hand had wholly stopped, Before his prayer had wholly ended, Slightly her foot the saint extended, And through the bars, O joy unhoped, The Virgin's jewelled slipper dropped. II. He caught it up with wild delight, And feasted on it soul and sight. O beauteous gift ! O wondrous token ! How clearly had not Heaven spoken ! No more dark days ; no more despair ; The strength of evil fate was broken ! His life would now be bright and fair, He stood beneath the Virgin's care ! With ecstasies of faith and joy He looked upon the glittering toy ; Kissed it and pressed it to his heart, And — gave a cry and sudden start. An iron grip was on his wrist ; Upon his neck an iron fist : There stood a grim, gigantic fellow, 72 The Fiddle and the Slipper. A man-at-arms in red and yellow, Whose words fell harshly on his ear, And filled him with a hideous fear. " So, so," he cried, " we've caught the thief! At last the rat has come to grief ! Here, beadle ! lend a hand. I feel The fellow wriggling like an eel." Up came the beadle and a priest ; The fiddler prayed to be released, And trembling laboured to explain. They listened not ; 'twas all in vain. " To steal," cried one, "the Virgin's slipper ! We'll hand him to the public whipper." " No ! " cried the priest, " this dreadful act Is sacrilege ! He must be racked Till every bone he has is cracked." They dragged him to the Marshal's dwelling Amid a mob with anger yelling ; And threats and oaths, and kicks, and cuffs Were in the Virgin's honour showered By more than fifty pious roughs Upon the sacrilegious coward Who had just laid his impious hand Upon the holiest in the land. Before the Marshal and his crew, The wretched Nepomuk again All trembling laboured to explain That all to miracle was due : That he had fiddled at the shrine, And that the effigy divine The Fiddle and the Slipper. 73 Had at his fiddling dropped her shoe. But he was met with roars of laughter That shook the very roof and rafter, And after much enduring there, Was handed over to the Mayor, Who called in haste his corporation, And, after weighty consultation, Declared that it was clearly shown The case concerned the Church alone. So, late at night, he was at last Into the Bishop's prison cast. Now it so chanced that on that day Just seven years had passed away Since any one for Jesus' sake Had been committed to the stake, — An unaccountable vacation Which hurt the Bishop's reputation. It was a great and growing scandal, Which gave his enemies a handle : What wonder, when he did so little To honour Heaven and to please, If Heaven sent the town no victual, But sent it famine and disease ? Too well this fact the Bishop knew ; But what, alas ! was he to do ? The heretics were now so sly, That 'twas mere waste of time to try To set them traps ; and as for wizards, Who used to be as many as lizards, 74 The Fiddle and the Slipper. His predecessor must have cast Into the flames the very last, For though he searched each nook and cranny, He wholly failed to ferret any. Nay, things had come to such pitch, You couldn't even find a witch. But suddenly, O hour of joy ! O golden day without alloy ! — Behold, the kindly Heavens send us A case of sacrilege tremendous. To steal the Virgin's jewelled shoe ! What next, good Lord, will Satan do ? Quick, heap the logs and poke the fire, Until the flames go shooting higher Than yonder tall cathedral spire ; And to the stake that's in the middle We'll tie this fiddler and his fiddle ! But matters went not quite so fast ; For many an endless month was passed (Indeed I think the months were seven) Far from the gentle light of Heaven, By that same fiddler in a cell Beneath the level of a well, The home of darkness and of damp, Of squalor and of fettered cramp, Where slimy waters oozed and trickled, Where unseen crawling creatures tickled ; Where every limb did waste and shrink ; Where mind at last unlearned to think ; Where tongue unlearned to speak, and ear The Fiddle and the Slipper. 75 Almost at last unlearned to hear ; Where almost eye unlearned to see ; Where moments were eternity; Where Nightmare with her crazing train Oft flitted in and out again, Oft placed her mouth upon his cheek, And woke him up with sudden shriek. For seven endless months he wasted, Nor knew how long the time had lasted, Nor why so little Death had hasted. At last he was brought out and learnt That in a week he would be burnt ; That though his body turned to coal, He might rest pleased, for on the whole 'Twas mighty wholesome for his soul. And then they told him, if he wanted To ask a boon before he died, It would not surely be denied. On Nepomuk's white altered face A gleam of hope was seen to flit. There was, he said, indeed a grace Which he would crave, and this was it : — Upon the dread and final day, When he should be upon his way To execution, might he play Upon his fiddle at the shrine Of Mary, Heaven's Queen Divine ? O Virgin, by whose image there, He played too well his plaintive air, j6 The Fiddle and the Slipper. Thou wilt not let thy fiddler die ; But from thy throne of stars on high Thou wilt forbid this act of shame ! Once more thou'lt listen to his fiddle, And thou wilt snatch him from the middle Of the devouring tongues of flame ! Slowly tolled the dying knell With a dull ill-omened sound, While the long procession wound, Bent upon its work of hell. Slowly went the monks and chanting, Cowled in brown, with sandalled feet, In the shadow of the slanting Gables of the narrow street. ' ' Dies irce, dies ilia, Solvet seecttlutn infavilla, Teste David aim sibylla." Then masked penitents with torches And two little holes for eyes, Chanting how the hell-flame scorches When the dead for judgment rise. And the priests with tapers marching And the crucifix ahead : Mighty burning, mighty parching When the trump shall wake the dead. " Tuba mirutn spat-gens sonum Per septtlc/ira regionwn Coget omnes ante thronum." The Fiddle and the Slipper. 77 Then the bones of great St. Ganclolf (For the truth a mighty fighter) ; And the chains of sweet St. Pandolf, And the Bishop with his mitre. Then the Virgin's stolen slipper, Carried on a tray of satin ; Then the Hangman and the Whipper, Chanting too in barbarous Latin. " Mors stupe bit et Nattira Cum resurget creatura Tudicanti responsura. " Then the Victim, walking slowly, Clad in sackcloth, bare of foot, Seeming to be careless wholly Of the crowd's insulting hoot. Fastened slackly round his middle Was a thick and knotted rope ; In his hand he held his fiddle, Which was now his only hope. " Quid sum miser tunc dicturus ? Quern patronum rogaturus, Cum vix Justus sit securus ?" Then came monk and knave and varlet, Bearing fagots for the stake ; Men-at-arms, striped black and scarlet, Followed close for order's sake. Then the Emblems of the Passion, Hammer, Tweezers, Sponge, and Lance, With the Coat of Seamless Fashion, And the Dice of Evil Chance. 78 The Fiddle and the Slipper. " Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addic/is, Voca me cum betiedictz's." Then the Guilds with all their banners, Weavers weak and Butchers strong ; Goldsmiths, Brewers, Coopers, Tanners, With apprentices in throng. Then the crowd from all the quarters Poured into that single street, Like to wild and turbid waters Which converge and roaring meet. The great procession had to pass Through the cathedral to hear Mass. Then, at the shrine within the aisle, The fiddler was to play a while, As had been promised and conceded, Before the pious souls proceeded Towards the city's largest square, And burned him with his fiddle there. So through the great cathedral porch Passed priest with taper, monk with torch, Into the shade of arch and column, Where echo made the chant more solemn, And where the stained-glass windows threw Their wondrous gleams of many a hue. There Nepomuk at last was brought To that same shrine his feet had sought ; The Fiddle and the Slipper. 79 Where, in her pointed azure niche, Adorned with jewels rare and rich, Stood Our Lady looking down From underneath her starry crown. They bade him fiddle, and if Heaven Should give a sign, he'd be forgiven. Now fiddler, fiddle for thy life ; For worse than water, rope, or knife Is what awaits thee if thou fail To move that Virgin's image pale : He grasped his bow. Oh, piteous sight, To see his lamentable plight ! His feet were bleeding from the stones ; The dungeon chains, worn day and night, Had eaten to his very bones. His lately shackled hands were numb ; No sound would from the fiddle come ; The faithless instrument was dumb ! He tried again : the cold sweat now Stood in big drops upon his brow. He tried again : a feeble whine Was all 'twould utter at the shrine. Then screams of laughter, spite the place, Nor pity on a single face. The Bishop swore with joy malicious The fiddler's tune was too delicious ; Was ever such a rare thing seen As that most comic fiddler's mien ? . . . But look ! but look ! Why stops the mirth ? What gives to such a silence birth ? 6 8o The Fiddle and the Slipper. "She moves! she moves!" runs through the crowd ; " She moves?" the Bishop cries aloud. She moves indeed : her pearly robe Is rustling on the azure globe. The statue with those features mild Has on the fiddler surely smiled. A mighty cry of wonder rends The shaken air, and for a while Wakes all the echoes of the aisle : For lo, the effigy extends Slightly her foot, in sight of all, And lets the other slipper fall. Thus he was saved, and lived to tell His children's sons how all befell. Nor did his pains go unrewarded, For he was made — so 'tis recorded — Cathedral organist-in-chief, With free supplies of bread and beef; And when at last his days were ended, His fellow-citizens suspended Within the shrine, just in the middle, His fiddle. Ipsissimus. 8i Ipsissimus. Thou priest that art behind the screen Of this confessional, give ear : I need God's help, for I have seen What turns my vitals limp with fear. Christ, O Christ, I must have done More mortal sin than any one Who says his prayers in Venice here ! And yet by stealth I only tried To kill my enemy, God knows ; And who on earth has yet denied A man the right to kill his foes? He won the race of the Gondoliers ; 1 hate him and the skin he wears ; I hate him and the shade he throws. I hate him through each day and hour ; All ills that curse me seem his fault ; He makes my daily soup taste sour, He makes my daily bread taste salt. And so I hung upon his track At dusk, to stab him in the back In some lone street or archway vault. 82 Ipsissimus. But oh, give heed ! — As I was stealing Upon his heels, with knife grasped tight, There crept across my soul a feeling That I myself was kept in sight. Each time I turned, dodge as I would, A masked and unknown watcher stood, Who baffled all my plans that night. What mask is this, I thought and thought, Who dogs me thus, when least I care ? His figure is nor tall nor short, And yet has a familiar air. But oh, despite this watcher's eye, I'll reach my man yet, by-and-by, And snuff his life out yet, elsewhere ! And though compelled to thus defer, I schemed another project soon; I armed my boat with a hidden spur, To run him down in the lagoon. At dusk I saw him row one day Where low and wide the waters lay, Reflecting scarce the dim white moon. No boat, as far as sight could strain, Loomed on the solitary sea; I saw my oar each minute gain Upon my death-doomed enemy. . . . Ipsissimus. 83 When lo, a black-masked gondolier, Silent and spectre-like, drew near, And stepped between my deed and me. He seemed to rise from out the flood, And hovered near, to mar my game ; I knew him and his cursed hood, His cursed mask : he was the same. So, balked once more, enraged and cowed, Back through the still lagoon I rowed In mingled wonder, wrath, and shame. Oh, were I not to come and pray Thee for thy absolution here In the confessional to-day, My very ribs would burst with fear. Leave not, good Father, in the lurch, An honest son of Mother Church, Whose faith is firm and soul sincere. Behind St. Luke's, as the dead men know, A pale apothecary dwells, Who deals in death both quick and slow, And baleful philtres, withering spells. He sells alike to rich and poor Who know what knocks to give his door, The yellow powder that rings the knells. 84 Ipsissimus. Well then, I went and knocked the knock With cautious hand, as I'd been taught ; The door revolved with silent lock, And I went in, suspecting naught. But oh, the self-same form stood masked Behind the counter, and unasked In silence proffered what I sought. My knees and hands like aspens shook : I spilt the powder on the ground ; I dared not turn, I dared not look ; My palsied tongue would make no sound. Then through the door I fled at last, With feet that seemed more slow than fast, And dared not even once turn round. And yet I am an honest man, Who only sought to kill his foe : Could I sit down and see each plan That I took up frustrated so ? God wot, as every scheme was balked, And in the sun my man still walked, I felt my hatred grow and grow. I thought, " At dusk, with stealthy tread I'll seek his dwelling, and I'll creep Upstairs, and hide beneath his bed, And in the night I'll strike him deep." Ipsissimus. 85 And so I went; but at his door The figure, masked just as before, Sat on the step, as if asleep. Bent, spite all fear, upon my task, I tried to pass: there was no space. Then rage prevailed; I snatched the mask From off the baffling figure's face. . . . And (oh, unutterable dread !) The face was mine, — mine white and dead, — Stiff with some frightful death's grimace. What sins are mine, oh, luckless wight ! That fate should play me such a trick, And make me see a sudden sight That turns both soul and body sick ? Stretch out thy hands, thou Priest unseen, That sittest there behind the screen, And give me absolution quick ! God, O God, his hands are dead ! His hands are mine, oh, monstrous spell ! 1 feel them clammy on my head : Is he my own dead self as well ? Those hands are mine, — their scars, their shape: O God, O God, there's no escape, And seeking Heaven, I fall on Hell ! III. Sonnets of Life and Fate* What the Sonnet is. 89 What the Sonnet is. Fourteen small broidered berries on the hem Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold; Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled Into the sea, for pearls to come of them ; Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem With which Medea human fate foretold ; Fourteen small drops, which Faustus, growing old, Craved of the Fiend, to water Life's dry stem. It is the pure white diamond Dante brought To Beatrice ; the sapphire Laura wore When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought ; The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core; The dark deep emerald that Rossetti wrought For his own soul, to wear for evermore. go Sunken Gold. Sunken Gold. In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships ; And gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell, Lie nestled in the ocean-flower's hell With love's old gifts, once kissed by long-drowned lips. And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips, And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell, Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell And seek dim twilight with their restless tips. So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes, Beneath the now hushed surface of myself, In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes ; They lie deep, deep ; but I at times behold In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf, The gleam of irrecoverable gold. Idle Charon. 91 Idle Charon. The shores of Styx are lone for evermore, And not one shadowy form upon the steep Looms through the dusk, as far as eyes can sweep, To call the ferry over as of yore ; But tintless rushes, all about the shore, Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep, Hoar-bearded Charon lies ; while pale weeds creep With tightening grasp all round the unused oar. For in the world of Life strange rumours run That now the Soul departs not with the breath, But that the Body and the Soul are one ; And in the loved one's mouth, now, after death, The widow puts no obol, nor the son, To pay the ferry in the world beneath. 92 Lethe. Lethe. I HAD a dream of Lethe, — of the brink Of sluggish waters, whither strong men bore Dead pallid loves ; while others, old and sore, Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink : And having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink Their load of love or guilt for evermore, Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore That lay beyond, no more to think and think. Oh who will give me, chained to Memory's strand, A drop of Lethe, salt with final tears, Were it one drop within the hollow hand ? Oh who will rid me of the wasted years, The thought of life's fair structure vainly planned, And each false hope that mocking reappears ? Fourteenth-Century Saints. 93 On some Fourteenth-Century Saints. In or and azure were they shrined of old, Where led dim aisle to glowing stained-glass rose, Like Life's dim lane, with Heaven at its close ; Where censer swung, and organ-thunder rolled ; Where, mitred, croziered, and superbly stoled, Pale pontiffs gleamed, in dusky minster shows ; Where, like a soul that trembling skyward goes, The Easter hymn soared up on wings of gold. And now they stand, with aureoles that time dims, Near young Greek fauns that pagan berries wreathe, In crowded glaring galleries of dead art. Their hands still fold ; their lips still sing faint hymns ; Or are they prayers that beautiful shapes breathe For shelter in some cold eclectic heart ? 94 The Death of Puck. The Death of Puck. I FEAR that Puck is dead, — it is so long Since men last saw him ; — dead with all the rest Of that sweet elfin crew that made their nest In hollow nuts, where hazels sing their song; Dead and for ever, like the antique throng The elves replaced : the Dryad that you guessed Behind the leaves ; the Naiad weed-bedressed ; The leaf-eared Faun that loved to lead you wrong. Tell me, thou hopping Robin, hast thou met A little man, no bigger than thyself, Whom they call Puck, where woodland bells are wet ? Tell me, thou Wood-Mouse, hast thou seen an elf Whom they call Puck, and is he seated yet, Capped with a snail-shell, on his mushroom shelf? The Death of Puck. 95 The Death of Puck. 11. The Robin gave three hops, and chirped, and said : "Yes, I knew Puck, and loved him ; though I trow He mimicked oft my whistle, chuckling low ; Yes, I knew cousin Puck ; but he is dead. " We found him lying on his mushroom bed — The Wren and I, — half covered up with snow, As we were hopping where the berries grow. We think he died of cold. Ay, Puck is fled." And then the Wood- Mouse said : " We made the Mole Dig him a little grave beneath the moss, And four big Dormice placed him in the hole. " The Squirrel made with sticks a little cross ; Puck was a Christian elf, and had a soul ; And all we velvet jackets mourn his loss." 96 The Wreck-Rock Bell. The Wreck- Rock Bell. Above Life's waves, with wild ill-omen'd toll, Just like the warning buoy-bell that is washed By livid breakers where a ship has crashed, I hear a bell of shipwreck in my soul. The bitter waste surrounds it ; woe's waves roll For ever t'wards it ; spray of hope long dashed Leaps over it ; and, ever faster lashed, It howls its dirge of ruin on the shoal. "Too late, too late," it thunders through the dark With brazen tongue that drips eternal brine, " Thy race is run ; thou wouldst not heed nor hark. " Too late, too late. Man sails, by foul or fine, One voyage only in his life's frail bark ; One and no more. What made thee shipwreck thine?" Baudelaire. 97 Baudelaire. A Paris gutter of the good old times, Black and putrescent in its stagnant bed, Save where the shamble oozings fringe it red, Or scaffold trickles, or nocturnal crimes. It holds dropped gold ; dead flowers from tropic climes ; Gems true and false, by midnight maskers shed ; Old pots of rouge ; old broken phials that spread Vague fumes of musk, with fumes of slums and slimes. And everywhere, as glows the set of day, There floats upon the winding fetid mire The gorgeous iridescence of decay : A wavy film of colour gold and fire Trembles all through it as you pick your way, And streaks of purple that are straight from Tyre. 98 Sea-shell Murmurs. Sea-shell Murmurs. The hollow sea-shell that for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent ; and we hear The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. We hear the sea. The sea ? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near, And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear And with our feelings' every shifting mood. Lo, in my heart I hear, as in a shell, The murmur of a world beyond the grave, Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. Thou fool ; this echo is a cheat as well, — The hum of earthly instincts ; and we crave A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. So-called Venus of Milo. 99 To the So-called Venus of Milo. Thou armless Splendour, Victory's own breath ; Embraceless Beauty, Strength bereft of hands ; To whose high pedestal a hundred lands Send rent of awe, and sons to stand beneath ; To whom Adonis never brought a wreath Nor Tannhauser a song, but whose commands Were blindly followed by immortal bands Who wooed thee at Thermopylae in death : No Venus thou ; but nurse of legions steeled By Freedom's self, where rung her highest note ; And never has thy bosom felt a kiss : No Venus thou ; but on the golden shield Which once thy lost left held, thy lost right wrote: "At Marathon and briny Salamis." ioo The Ransom of Peru. The Ransom of Peru. The conquered Inca to Pizarro said : " I swear to fill this hall with virgin gold As high as any Spaniard here can hold His steel-gloved hand, if thou wilt spare my head." Then streamed the ingots from their rocky bed : For weeks and weeks the tide of treasure roll'd To reach the mark ; but when the sum was told, The victor only strangled him instead. So, many have said to Fate : " If I may eat Life's mere coarse bread, the ransom shall be pour'd In rhymes of gold at thy victorious feet." But like Pizarro waiting for his hoard, Fate gave them chains ; and letting them complete The glittering heap, then drew the strangling cord. The Ring of Faustus. ioi The Ring of Faustus. There is a tale of Faustus, — that one day Lucretia the Venetian, then his love, Had, while he slept, the rashness to remove His magic ring, when fair as a god he lay ; And that a sudden horrible decay O'erspread his face ; a hundred wrinkles wove Their network on his cheek ; while she above His slumber crouched, and watched him shrivel away. There is upon Life's hand a magic ring, — The ring of Faith-in-Good, Life's gold of gold ; Remove it not, lest all Life's charm take wing : Remove it not, lest straightway you behold Life's cheek fall in, and every earthly thing Grow all at once unutterably old. 102 The Silent Fellow. The Silent Fellow. "Who art thou, silent brother ? Art thou Pain,— In face so like me ; sitting on the bed In which I lie ? " — " Pain for to-day has said Good-night."— "Then Weariness?"— " No; wrong again." "Thou hast a branch of bay, still wet with rain : Art thou my former self, from years long fled ? Or Hope, or Loneliness? " " No, Hope is dead, And thy old self lies low in Time's dull plain. "None of all these am I ; although men say I have a look of all. The part I play Is to reflect what stronger gods control : " I am thy Sonnet Spirit ; and to-day I bring a branch of Dead-Sea fruit, not bay, Plucked by the bitter waters of the Soul." The Ever Young. io- The Ever Young. There are round lips that once obtained a draught From the deep sapphire of the Fount of Youth ; Lips old, lips young, whose smile attests the truth Of that great dream at which the wise have laughed ; And there are brows, which still, by magic craft, Defy the years that know nor rest nor ruth, And which remain, in spite of Time's sharp tooth, As radiant as the wondrous waters quaffed. But not of living flesh and blood are they ; And Art alone can give their long youth birth, And bid them keep it while mere men grow grey. Art makes the only ever-young on earth ; Shapes which can keep, till crumbled quite away, A young saint's rapture or a young faun's mirth. io4 The Ever Young. The Ever Young. ii. What impious wrinkle ever marred the cheek Of that proud beauty, armless from of old, Who stands, though twenty centuries are scroll'd, Young as when first she smiled upon the Greek ? What thread of silver ever dared to streak The wavy wonder of the wanton gold Round Titian's Magdalen, while men behold Each other whiten, as their lives grow bleak ? And those more breathing beings that the pen Creates of subtler substance than the brush Or chisel ever dealt with, — what of them? Are Juliet's eyes less bright in those of men, Her cheek less oval ; and will ages crush The youth from out Pompilia's frail cut stem ? The Ever Young. 105 The Ever Youn^. in. And yet Art's wonders are at last Death's prize ; The shattered marble crumbles into lime ; Canvas and fresco perish into grime ; The pen's great shapes will die when language dies. The Milo stone will go where lime's dust flies, And Titian's Magdalen grow black with time ; Juliet will end with England's tongue and rhyme, Pompilia too, that other shapes may rise. But not a wrinkle will o'ercreep their brow, Nor thread of silver mar the locks we love, However oft a century's knell has rung ; And when they die they will be fair as now ; For they are cherished by the gods above ; And those the gods are fond of, perish young. io6 A Flight from Glory. A Flight from Glory. Once, from the parapet of gems and glow, An Angel said, " O God, the heart grows cold On these eternal battlements of gold, Where all is pure, but cold as virgin snow. Here sobs are never heard ; no salt tears flow; Here there are none to help, — nor sick nor old ; No wrong to fight, no justice to uphold : Grant me Thy leave to live man's life below." "And then annihilation?" God replied. " Yes," said the Angel, " even that dread price ; For earthly tears are worth eternal night." "Then go," said God. — The Angel opened wide His dazzling wings, gazed back on Heaven thrice, And plunged for ever from the walls of light. Spring. 107 Sp nnsf. There lurks a sadness in the April air For those who note the fate of earthly things ; A dreamy sense of what the future brings To those too good, too hopeful, or too fair. An underbought of heartache, as it were, Blends with the pcean that the new leaf sings ; And, as it were, a breeze from Death's great wings Shakes down the blossoms that the fruit-trees bear. The tide of sap flows up the forest trees ; The birds exult in every bough on high ; The ivy bloom is full of humming bees ; But if you list, you hear the latent sigh ; And each new leaf that rustles in the breeze Proclaims the boundless mutability. io8 Oberon's Last Council. Oberon's Last Council. He called a last assembly of the Elves. Hundreds of the Fairies in the forest met Round one huge oak-tree, — sprites of dry and wet, Pixies and Imps, and every gnome that delves. And Oberon said : " We lurk by tens and twelves, Starved in the woods. Man's faith — our food as yet- Feeds us no more ; the Fairies' sun has set : We are but shadows of our former selves. " Tis time to leave the woods, and we must part. When faith quite ends — so say the High Decrees — Then Death will strike us with his icy dart. " Long have we nestled in the hearts of trees, Now we must nestle in the Poet's heart, — The only place where fairies never freeze." The Grave of Omar Khayyam. 109 The Grave of Omar Khayyam. They washed his body with a wine of gold, And wrapped it round, to meet his last desire, In leaves of vine, whose every pale-green spire Tightened about him with an amorous hold ; And then they buried him in vineyard mould, Where vintage hymns in summer dusk expire, And where great vine-roots sucked all round him fire For fiery cups, as ages o'er him rolled. A lethargy creeps o'er us on this spot Where bulbul warbles on oblivion's brink, And all that man should live for is forgot. The wine-girl floats towards us with her cup ; Or is it Azrael with darker drink ? Wake up, wake up ; shake free thy soul ; wake up ! no The Wreck of Heaven. The Wreck of Heaven. i. I HAD a vision : naught for miles and miles But shattered columns, shattered walls of gold, And precious stones that from their place had roll'd, And lay in heaps, with littered golden tiles ; While, here and there, amid the ruined piles Of gold and sardius, and their sparkling mould, Wild tufts of amaranth had taken hold, Scenting the golden desert like sweet isles. And not one soul, and not one step nor sound, Until there started up a haggard head Out of the gold, from somewhere underground. Wildly he eyed me and the wreck all round : "Who's this?" quoth I. He shrilled a laugh and said : " The last of souls. I haunt this dazzling mound." The Wreck of Heaven. hi The Wreck of Heaven. ii. Ay, ay, the gates of pearl are crumbling fast ; The walls of beryl topple stone by stone ; The throngs of souls in white and gold are gone ; The jasper pillars lie where they were cast. The roofless halls of gold are dumb and vast ; The courts of jacinth are for ever lone ; Through shattered chrysolite the blind winds moan, And topaz moulders to the earth at last. And earth is the reality : its hue Is brown and sad ; its face is hard to till ; Upon man's brow the sweat must hang like dew. But grain takes root, in valley, plain, and hill, Though never Heaven's amaranth here grew. And grain breeds grain, and more and more grain still. ii2 Leopardi's Poems. On the Fly-leaf of Leopardi's Poems. There was a hunchback in a slavish day, Crushed out of shape by Heaven's iron weight, Who made the old Italic string vibrate In Freedom's harp, on which few dared to play ; A Titan's soul in /Esop's cripple clay ; A dwarf Prometheus, blasted by Jove's hate, Who scorned the God that held him locked in fate, And called the world the mud in which he lay. And mud it is ; but mud that can be tilled To grow the wheat, the olive, and the grape, And fill more garners than men's hands can build. And those bare tracts, whence all would fain escape, Conceal, perhaps, some buried urn, all filled With golden claries stamped with a winged shape. Sonnet Gold. 113 Sonnet Gold. What shall we make of sonnet gold for men ? The dove-wreathed cup some youth to Phryne gave? Or dark Locusta's phial that shall have, Chiselled all round it, snakes from Horror's den? Or that ill ring, which sank in fathoms ten, When Faliero spoused the Venice wave ? Or Inez' funeral crown, the day the grave Showed her for coronation, all myrrh then ? The best to make would be a hilt of gold For Life's keen falchion, like a dragon's head Fierce and fantastic, massive in your hold ; But oft the goldsmith's chisel carves instead A fretted shrine for sorrows that are old, And passions that are sterile or are dead. ii4 All Souls' Day, All Souls' Day. i. All Souls' Day's wintry light is on the wane ; The Tuscan furrows darken deeper brown ; And still the sower, ever up and down, Is hard at work, broad-scattering his grain, As, since dim times, again and yet again (Beginning with old nations scarcely known, Pelasgi and Etruscans) he has thrown His seed upon this old Italic plain. And what became of all those shadowy dead Who sowed their wheat, built Cyclopean walls, And left their lives unwritten on man's scrolls ? Just what became of what they sowed for bread — Of grain that breeds fresh grain that falls and falls : Earth had their bones ; and who shall find their souls ? All Souls' Day. 115 All Souls' Day. 11. What heavens that grow, what hells that still ex- pand, Would hold the close-packed souls of all who found Earth's bread or sweet or bitter, and were bound In sheaves of shadow by the silent hand ? The close-packed souls of every time and land ; Millions of millions mingled with the ground ; Of all the mounded mummy-dust all round, Who, back on earth, would fight for room to stand, Nor find a square foot each? ... But dusk has grown ; The fields are empty ; day is dying fast ; And, save one figure, all is grey and lone— The figure of the sower who has cast Wheat for the quick where countless dead have sown, And passes ghost-like on his way at last. n6 To my Tortoise Ananke. To my Tortoise Ananke. Say it were true that thou outliv'st us all, O footstool once of Venus ; come, renew Thy tale of old Greek isles, where thy youth grew In myrtle shadow, near her temple wall ; Or tell me how the eagle let thee fall Upon the Greek bard's head from heaven's blue, And Apathy killed Song. And is it true That thy domed shell would bear a huge stone ball ? O Tortoise, Tortoise, there are weights, alack ! Heavier than stone, and viewless as the air, Which none have ever tried upon thy back ; Which, ever and anon, we men must bear — Weights which would make thy solid cover crack And how we bear them, let those ask who care. Epilogue to the Sonnets. 117 Epilogue to the Sonnets. I WROUGHT them like a targe of hammered gold On which all Troy is battling round and round ; Or Circe's cup, embossed with snakes that wound Through buds and myrtles, fold on scaly fold ; Or like gold coins, which Lydian tombs may hold, Stamped with winged racers, in the old red ground ; Or twined gold armlets from the funeral mound Of some great viking, terrible of old. I know not in what metal I have wrought, Nor whether what I fashion will be thrust Beneath the clods that hide forgotten thought ; But if it is of gold it will not rust ; And when the time is ripe it will be brought Into the sun, and glitter through its dust. $££» IV. From the "Fountain of Youth. Chorus of the Spirits of Youth. 121 Chorus of the Spirits of Youth. The Rejuvenation of /Eson. One day, when the world was younger, To the Argonaut feast we flew, Where sated their god-like hunger A demi-god wondrous crew. And godlike were boast and laughter At the board of the half-divine, And the songs that they sang thereafter Of love and the golden wine. But one in the feast's gay middle, Like an owl in the noonday glare, As dumb as a waiting riddle, Sat lone with his blear-eyed stare : For /Eson the King was hoary ; Like Lethe his blood's slow pace ; He hearkened nor song nor story, And knew not his own son's face. Like a tree that is bare and hollow While the others are green all round, Nor buds when returns the swallow, He loomed in his frost hard bound. 122 Chorus of the Spirits of Youth. Like a sleeper that none can waken, Or a phantom of times long dead, He sat through the mirth unshaken, Nor lifted his snow-crowned head. Then Medea, the great dark seeker Of herbs that are feared, she swore That /Eson should lift life's beaker And drink of Youth's wine once more And she called on the night to give her The plants that renew life's sap, Where the moon lit a spell-bound river, As many as filled her lap. And she poured in his veins their juices, And watched how, by magical art, They recovered for life's young uses His limbs, till they reached his heart ; And how, like a frost-numb creature, Unfreezing at Spring's strong call, Each shrivelled and time-nipped feature Was freed from the ice-like thrall. His skin, that was creased and deadened, Grew smooth as the new blood came, And betrayed it, as soft it reddened, As an ivory screen shows flame ; Chorus of the Spirits of Youth. 123 While his locks that were wan as mosses On a tree that is ages old, Were converted by youth's bright glosses Into hyacinth bells of gold. His eyes than the dew were duller, Which never the sun o'ercrept ; But in them, as dew takes colour, The spark of the sunrise leapt. With myrtle and rose they crowned him, And placed in his hand life's cup, While we circled unseen all round him, And lifted its foam high up. As much as was done for /Eson, That much shall be done for thee, If thou drown but thy thought, thy reason, In the glittering waves that free. In a day shall be healed and mended The life-work of Care's sharp tooth, And the dream of a lifetime ended In eddies of god-like youth. 124 Chorus of the Spirits of Age. Chorus of the Spirits of Age. With a little invisible chisel We work on the stone of the brow, Where the locks are beginning to grizzle, And thinner and thinner are now ; And deeper we furrow and deeper, By day on the cheek of the reaper, And by night on the cheek of the sleeper, With a little invisible plough. The snow we have gathered and sifted In the tiniest feathery flakes, The wretch that has fevered and shifted Shall find on his head as he wakes. No sunshine shall melt it, of Heaven, Nor the splinter of ice we have driven Through the heart that has struggled and striven, And tightened with infinite aches. We blow on his hand, and it trembles As trembles a tremulous tree ; With fetter unseen, that resembles A felon's, we palsy his knee. We perch on his neck and his shoulder, And curve them, as older and older He groweth, and colder and colder, Still trying to shuffle and flee. Chorus of the Spirits of Age. 125 We deaden his eye as it glistens, And wrap him in thickening haze ; We sit in his ear, and he listens In vain on the murmurous ways. We creep in his heart and destroy The germs of affection and joy, And the bubbles of pleasure that buoy The years and the months and the days. And though for a little he lingers, And clings to the gathering gloom, Our silent invisible fingers Inclose him in meshes of doom. And quicker we draw him and quicker, With heart that is sicker and sicker, Through the night that is thicker and thicker, By invisible strings to the tomb. Thou thinkest to fool us, O dreamer, Though ever we hiss in thy ears, And hopest in Youth the Redeemer, To baffle the numbness of years : But, lo ! we have sought and have found thee, And we hover about and around thee, And tighter and tighter have bound thee With pitiless nooses of years. 126 Song of the Water- Witches. Song of the Water- Witches. We scatter the leaven That raises to heaven The storm that we brew ; Each multiplied bubble Shall bring into trouble Some merry ship's crew. We put into motion The whirlpools of ocean With twirl of the thumb, When sailors are sleeping, Or drowsy watch keeping, And down the ships come. The waterspout's tower, Tliat spins till you cower, Is born of the reel Which, faster and faster, We dance, when we master Some great ocean keel. We touch with a finger The vessels that linger Above where we lurk Song of the Water- Witches. 127 And the leak never ceases, But ever increases, Till Death does his work. We crouch where the conger Winds, stronger and stronger, Round livid, dead limbs ; And where, like a floating Medusa's head, gloating, The octopus swims In caves where the jellies, With luminous bellies, Seem watery moons ; And fish phosphorescent Shed light evanescent Where heaven's ray swoons. And now with a leaden Stagnation we deaden The sea and the air, Until in the vessel A horror shall nestle There, ever there. And day on day follows, Until the throat swallows Brine in its strain ; i28 Song of the Water- Witches. And even another, Till brother kills brother To drink of his vein ; The while the broad ocean Knoweth no motion, Vapour, nor breath — But thirst, and thereafter Madness and laughter, Dancing and death. Song of the Arrow-Poisoners. 129 Song of the Arrow-Poisoners. When nature was fashioned, The vapours of hell Crept through to the surface, Insidious and fell. Of plants that are deadly They fattened the root ; The sap of destruction Filled berry and fruit ; While trickles of horror, In numberless snakes, Ran live through the grasses That summer awakes. And tetanus followed The rattlesnake's grasp, And palsy the ripple Of cobra and asp. The juice of creation Is venom and blood, And torture is master Of earth and of flood. 130 Song of the Arrow-Poisoners. All nature is teeming With claw and with fang : Above is the beauty, Beneath is the pang. In shadow and flowers The leopardess lies ; Two living green embers Glow wild in her eyes. The sea is all sunshine ; The shark is beneath ; A wave of red water Wells up from his teeth. But man is the monarch Of torture and death ; The breath of his nostrils Is murder's own breath — The hunter of hunters Who hunts his own race, Relentless and savage, From off the earth's face. So dip we the arrows In juices of night, That madness and horror May follow their flight ; Song of the Arrow-Poisoners. 131 And waves, as of lava, May run in each vein, Till lethargy deadens Unthinkable pain. 132 Chorus of Dawn Spirits. Chorus of Dawn Spirits. From the amber of the sunrise We are calling thee to come Where the heartache ends for ever And the sob of earth is dumb ; Where the soul no longer struggles Like a bird that shakes a cage ; Where the song of Life is over, And there is nor youth nor age. Leave the land of wistful gazes, Leave the shore of pain and care, Where the smile is one of sorrow And the laughter is despair ; For its hum is as the humming Of a hollow Dead Sea shell, And its very cries of gladness Echo like a faint farewell. Glowing undiscovered islands In a golden ocean lie, Where a diamond rim outlineth All the headlands of the sky ; And the light of peace is spreading In a great transcendent fan, Where the coasts of Death await thee, Overbright for eyes of man. Chorus of Dawn Spirits. 133 Come (.hat we may greet and wing thee With the pinions of the dead ; Come that we may place the halo Of the martyr on thy head ; Come that we may gather round thee On the battlements of gold, Where the older count no winters, And the younger grow not old. 1 V. Imaginary Sonnets* Henry I. to the Sea. 137 Henry I. to the Sea. [A.D. 1 120.] O Sea, take all, since thou hast taken him Whose life to me was life. Let one wide wave Now sweep this land, and make a single grave For king and people. Let the wild gull skim Where now is England, and the sea-fish swim In every drowned cathedral's vaulted nave, As in a green and pillared ocean cave, Submerged for ever and for ever dim. And if the shuddering pilot ventures there And sees their pinnacles, like rocks to shun, Above the waves, and green with tidal hair, Then let him whisper that this thing was done By God, the Lord of Oceans, at the prayer Of England's king, who mourned his only son. 138 Venus to Tannhauser. Venus to Tannhauser. [a.d. 1207.] Thou art the sunshine of the woods of fir ; Thou art the loud brook's song, the wild bee's hum ; Thou art the fragrance of the trickling gum That scents the morning like a mountain myrrh. Thy strength is like the snow's when Spring's feet stir Its beetling loads, that down with thunder come. Thy voice is like the call that wakes things numb When April fills the woods with insect whirr. Adonis was the panting southern wave, The lazy lapping brightness at my feet ; The lemon-laden breath that Greek isles gave ; But thou, strong breeze, ineffably more sweet, Pungent with scents that Northern forests have, Thou in my heart hast hurled him from his seat. Farinata to Florence. 139 Farinata Degli Uberti to Conquered Florence. [a.d. 1260.] Now shall the ploughshare over thee be passed, And wiped away each crowded square and street ; And seed shall sprinkle thee, and wholesome wheat Replace thy crops of human hate at last ; And through the empty valley where thou wast, Arno shall seek thee wondering, and repeat To land and sea the news that on the seat Of stately Florence cornfields ripen fast ! And yet, thou evil city, I was born Within thee, and I hesitating stand : Enough that I should scorch thee with my scorn. Live on, thou nest of scorpions. Not my hand Shall pull thee down to sow the yellow corn. Live, and repent thee — spared at my command. 140 Carmagnola to Venice. Carmagnola to the Republic of Venice. [A.D. I432.] I HEAR my death-bell tolling in the square ; And I am ready, ye Venetian Ten ; But God at times reveals to dying men The future's depths, and what the years prepare : And, through Time's veil, I see, as through thick air, A day of doom, beyond your finite ken, When this strong Venice — old and feeble then — In vain, like me, shall call on men to spare. The day shall come when she shall drink of gall, And when the same blind fear that makes you take My life to-day, shall consummate her fall ; When she shall take the noise her own troops make For the foe's shout, and in this very hall, In her wild fear, her old sea-sceptre break. Leonardo to his Snakes. 141 Leonardo da Vinci to his Snakes. [a.d. 1480.] I LOVE to watch them, trickling on the floor, Like Evil's very oozings running free ; Now livid blue, now green as green can be, Now almost white, though black an hour before. Their undulation, trammelled by no shore, Might be a ripple upon Horror's sea, The live meander moves so soundlessly, Inscrutable as Magic's very core. What if I painted a Medusa's head, Fresh severed, lying on its back, with brow Convulsed in death, and wan as moonlit lead ; And made the snakes, still writhing in a slow Death struggle round the temples that are dead, Striving to quit them in a ceaseless flow? 142 Lorenzo to his Last Autumn. Lorenzo de Medici to his Last Autumn. [A. D. 1491-] Now falls the autumn in a rain of gold, And makes a very Danae of earth, Whose breast, beneath the yellow leaves, gives birth To scented sighs, as hers 'neath Jove of old. And golden vapour fills each mountain fold, And warmth and ripeness fill the broad land's girth, Ere old November cowers by the hearth To warm his hands that tremble with the cold. But I, whose autumn cometh premature, From these Careggi windows mutely gaze On yonder towered Florence, through the pure October air, just tinged with golden haze, And see alone the tomb, where, cold and sure, Eternal winter waits me some few days. LUCA SlGNORELLI TO HIS SON. I43 Luca Signorelli to his Son. [a.d. 1500.] They brought thy body back to me quite dead, Just as thou hadst been stricken in the brawl. I let no tear, I let no curses fall, But signed to them to lay thee on the bed. Then, with clenched teeth, I stripped thy clothes soaked red ; And taking up my pencil at God's call, All night I drew thy features, drew them all, And every beauty of thy pale chill head. For I required the glory of thy limbs, To lend it to archangel and to saint, And of thy brow for brows with halo rims ; And thou shalt stand, in groups that I shall paint Upon God's walls ; till, like procession hymns Lost in the distance, ages make them faint. 10 144 To the Spirit of Tempests. Vasco de Gama to the Spirit of Tempests. [A.D. I504.] Al.L round about us was a liquid hell ; In monstrous chains the livid summits ran Beneath thy breath to crush us ; and where man Had never sailed, roared round our tortured shell. Then on the lurid sky, where rose and fell The black horizon waves, as night began, I saw thee loom, immense and vague and wan, And heard thy voice, that seemed a booming bell : " Back, back ! " thou howl'dst ; " these boundless seas are mine. Here is no place for man. Here I alone Have right to reign. Back, back, while life is thine !" But I pushed on, and made thy seas my own ; And by-and-by I saw the tossing line Of waves subside, to show me India's throne. Balboa to the Pacific. 145 Balboa to the Pacific. [A.D. I513.] I saw thee, like a strip of cloth of gold, From the hill crest, last eve at set of sun, Thou new-found Ocean, skimmed as yet by none, Save Indian light canoes ; and I behold Thy bright waves now, in wreaths of foam unrolled, Kissing my feet, like panting slaves that run, Eager to lay their treasures one by one At feet of Spain, whose banner I unfold. Nereids and mermen, tritons of this sea, I claim you for Don Ferdinand, and bid Your scaly legions swear him fealty. The gold, the pearls, the emeralds that are hid In all your isles and caves, are his ; and he Alone may force the treasure's crystal lid. 146 To the Fountain of Youth. Ponce de Leon To the Fountain of Youth. [a.d. 1520.] I. Thou bubbling rippling diamond that I seek Among these Indian isles, while heavier grow Both foot and heart, as hope of thee ebbs low, And as the years add wrinkles to my cheek : Behold, my back grows bent, my hand grows weak, And on the shrivelled vellum of my brow The years have written all the cares they know, And I am whitening like a wintry peak. And thou art in existence, — in some isle Where pebbles of pure gold thy clear depths pave, Like golden thoughts beneath a dreamer's smile. Alone some silent Indian stoops to lave His wrinkles off; or else, from while to while, Some wounded panther laps thy healing wave. To the Fountain of Youth. 147 Ponce de Leon To the Fountain of Youth. 11. Fount, shall I never find thee? Must I still Search isle on isle, whilst other men behold Their baser dreams fulfilled, and clutch the gold, The sparkling stones, that cure no human ill ? Shall every other Spanish seeker fill His ship with ingots, plunge in gems untold His gauntlet elbow-high, while I grow old In searching for the sapphire of thy rill ? Fount, I'll attain thee yet ; and by thy brink I'll kneel, and see my white reflected hair For the last time, before I drink and drink : But as I wash the wrinkles and the care From off my brow, and in thy brightness sink, What, if made young, I died of rapture there ? 148 Faustus to Helen of Troy. Doctor Faustus to Helen of Troy. [a.d. 1520.] Thou shinest on me like the single star That brightens in the pearly purple dusk, When dreamy eve has scents of forest musk, And faintly gleams the moon's pale scimitar. The world's exulting beauties, near and far, By thee are crones, their cheek a wrinkled husk, O thou whose breast is flame-lit Libyan tusk, Whose eyes once kindled heaven-scaling war. Off with this pedant's robe, this dull base garb, That I may break a lance against the world, Thou queen of Queens of Beauty, in thy name ; And on a steel-clad steed, a fiery barb, Win Helen's smile, as each proud knight I've hurled Writhes in his armour in the dust and shame! Faustus to Helen of Troy. 149 Doctor Faustus to Helen of Troy. 11. At times I think thou art the moon that strays Across my dusty study at still night, And makes the phials and retorts gleam bright As clustered icicles beneath her rays ; For thou transmutest by thy placid gaze All dust to dust of diamonds — O thou Light Of long-dead lands, which, by my magic might, I have rekindled for my olden days. Oh, I will hide thy legion-dooming charms Deep in this dark old house, — lest the Greek dead Should burst their graves to snatch thee from my arms, And, by the ghosts of all their captains led, Should girdle Wittenberg with shadowy swarms, As many as the leaves on Autumn's bed ! 150 WOLSEY TO HIS HOUND. Cardinal Wolsey to his Hound. [A.D. 1530.] Approach, my hound ; approach and lick my hand ; Thou art not human, and thou wilt not bite ; And still thou fawnest on me in despite Of frowning courtiers and a king's command. hound, O hound, — if thou couldst understand How ruined I am, and in what sorry plight, Thou too wouldst turn against me, and delight To root thy fangs, like all the thankless band. 1 might have built my house upon a rock ; I chose to build it on the sands that slide, And fill it up with gold until it fell. Approach and lick my hand, that we may mock With thy sincerity the tongues that lied, And with thy 'ove the friends that bite so well. To the Statue of Day. i^i Michael Angelo to his Statue of Day [a.d. 1535.] Thou strong swift Day, that with a single leap Dost tip with gold the hundred-humped spine Of this broad rocky Tuscan Apennine, Then down the blue and misty valleys creep ; Thou findest Freedom everywhere asleep, And men as listless as the grunting swine ; And pourest down the splendour of thy shine Just as before, though God's own angels weep : Therefore I give thee neither face nor eyes, But leave thy head unhewn, until such time As Freedom bursts her slumber and shall rise, O thou who ripenest the grapes that climb The roadside trees, and heatest harvest skies, That men may feed and wallow in the slime. 152 To the Flowers and Birds. Lady Jane Grey To the Flowers and Birds. [A.D. I553.] To-morrow death : and there are woods hard by, With restless spots of sunshine on the ground, With bees that hum and birds that pipe all round, And beds of moss where sparkling dewdrops lie. To-morrow death : and there are fields of rye Where poppies and bright corn-flowers abound ; And there are fragrant grasses, where the sound Of streamlets rises, as the mowers ply. I wonder if the woodland bells will close A little earlier on the day I end, Tired of the light, though free from human woes; And if the robin and the thrush will wend A little sooner to their sweet repose, To make a little mourning for their friend? To her Child. 153 Catherine Talbot to her Child. [a.d. 1560.] A face keeps peeping at me through the pane ; I know thee : thou art Madness. — Where are they, The men in masks, who stole my child away ? All day, all night, I hunt for it in vain. I hear all round me, ever and again, A pattering of little feet a: play, But can see nought. — Come child, come child, it's May ; We'll dance the Dance of Death o'er hill and plain. The painted Virgin in the chapel shrine Has seven daggers sticking in her breast : I think there must be seventy in mine. Oh for an earthquake ! — Crimson clouds to West . . . The sun's face stoops to drink ; it drinks the brine. I too drink brine. — Those little feet can't rest. 154 To Mary Stuart. Chastelard to Mary Stuart. [a.d. 1563.] Then send me to my death. But wilt thou rid Thy life of me thereby ? — for in the gloom Of thy adored and silent balmy room My ghost shall glide, where once I panting hid. At night thou'lt see me, though thou close thy lid As tightly as they solder down my tomb, And feel a kiss — thou well shalt know of whom— Scorch thee as living kisses never did. When thou shalt die, at Heaven's gate I'll sit, And watch the stream of silent souls that wend Through the great arch, till thou approachest it ; Or if thy doom be flame, I shall descend Through all the caverns where the lost souls flit, To find and clasp thee at their endless end. To Distant Rome. 155 The Wandering- Jew to Distant Rome. [A.D. I598.] I. Once more, O Rome, once more, Eternal One, I come to thee from northmost woods of larch, Across thy plain, whose grasses rot and parch, And see thee standing in the setting sun ; And see as once, though ages slowly run, Thy aqueducts still stretching, arch on arch, Like files of dusky giants on the march, Through miasms I alone need never shun. But what is yon strange mass that I behold ; What unfamiliar heaven-scaling dome Stands out in black against the sky of gold ? As deathless as myself, Eternal Rome, Thou slowly changest as the world grows old, While I, unchanged, still measure plain and foam. 156 To Distant Rome. The Wandering Jew to Distant Rome. 11. The dust of countless years weighs down my feet, Worn out with trudging o'er the bones of those Whom I saw born, while states and cities rose, Declined and vanished, even to their seat. The generations ripen like the wheat Which every Spring for Summer's sickle sows ; While I, sole spared, trudge on without repose Through empty desert and through crowded street. The lightning splits the stone upon my path ; The earthquake passes with its crazing sound ; The whirlwind wraps me in its cloak of wrath ; All Nature spares me, while it girds me round With every living terror that it hath, And on I trudge, till ages shall be crowned. To Distant Rome. 157 The Wandering Jew to Distant Rome. in. And on and on, through Scythia's whistling waste, Alone beneath inexorable stars ; Or, lonelier still, through India's full bazaars, Pursued by none, yet ever onward chased. Or through the wreck of empires long effaced, Whose pomp I saw, and their triumphal cars ; Or in the track of Europe's thousand wars, Swept on by routed armies in their haste. Each path of Earth, my foot, which ne'er may stop, Treads and retreads, and yet hath but begun Its lonely journey through the human crop ; To last till Earth, exhausted, shall have spun Her meted spin, and, like a wavering top, Shall lurch her last, and Time shall eat the Sun. 158 To the Unseen Spring. Arabella Stuart to the Unseen Spring. [a.d. 1612.] It must be Spring : a long bright slanting ray Peeps daily in, and warms my prison now ; While, through the bars on which I rest my brow, A twittering of swallows finds its way. The world must now be full of thorny may ; Bright speckled butterflies ; young leaves that glow ; Ripe fragrant grass ; fresh banks where wild bells grow ; Bleatings and whistlings, cuckoo notes all day. Thou peeping ray of Spring, go kiss the corn That sprouts beneath the breeze, and never pry Into this cell, where Misery pines forlorn ; Ye happy, happy swallows, that can fly On Spring's own breath, oh twitter not such scorn Of earth, of woe, and of captivity ! To 'the Earth. 159 Galileo to the Earth. [A.D. 1638.] And yet it moves ; it spins through night and day With dumb terrific speed ; and town and throng, Mountain and tossing sea, are whirled along, And not one drop is spilt upon the way. On heaven's dustless paths the Lord can play With heavier balls than ours ; and there, among Unnumbered spheres that never can go wrong, He's hurled us on our course, and we obey. Earth, I feel thee quiver underfoot ; I feel the whizzing of thy ceaseless flight, As other whirling planets past us shoot. 1 feel thee bounding like a ship at night Through unseen waves. To guide us, God has put On every skyey coast a starry light. II i6o To his Shadow. Alexander Selkirk to his Shadow. [a.d. 1708.] This solitary Eden is a hell. Let's say I am the first of human race Upon a new-made world, alone with space, And watching thee, my shadow, shrink and swell ; Or man's last vestige, left behind to dwell On earth's last steep, unflooded resting-place, To tell the wind, which whistles past my face, Man's ended tale — my voice, his parting knell. My shadow, truly thou art very kind To keep me company ! Ye cockatoos, Why stay ye here ? I still should have the wind. I see it rustling 'mid the light bamboos, As evening neareth. Lidless, bloodshot, blind, The sun's huge eyeball dips, and slumber woos. To his Shadow. 161 Alexander Selkirk to his Shadow. ii. Each day the doubt that nestles in my soul Now takes a firmer hold. What if this lone And horror-haunted, ocean-circled stone Were, with myself, the universe — the whole ? What if the world, its cities and man's shoal, Were but my own vain dream, and every one Of what I deem my memories of years gone A picture which my fevered nights unroll ? The weight of all these burning stars o'erhead, All staring down upon one single man, Will squeeze out reason, if it hath not fled Already; and, as only doomed minds can, I watch the words, which, lest my tongue grow dead, I utter to this sea, unsailed and wan. 162 To an Unfinished Violin. Stradivarius to an Unfinished Violin. [a.d. 1710.] The roar and gurgle of the ocean cave Are in thy fibres, and the sob of man ; The moan that through a haunted cloister ran, And every murmur that the beach-woods have. Ay, and the wild bee's hum, where red pines wave ; The carol of the gipsy caravan ; The song that's uttered by the dying swan ; The warning growl that brooding Etna gave. All this is in thy fibres — ay, and more, If men but care to have it, and set free The quivering soul that only waits to soar. Thy voice shall be as thrilling as the plea Of cave-bound spirits, gathering to implore The silent Powers of Eternity. To his Bastille Rats. 163 Latucle to his Bastille Rats. [A.D. I750.] I've found a bit of stick and made a flute; My prison rats, what shall I pipe you now? Oh, shall I pipe to you of streams that flow Through tangled grass, where swallows whirl and shoot ; Or of the mossy carpets at the root Of forest trees, with branches waving low; Or of autumnal orchards, all aglow With mellow sunshine and with reddened fruit? Or shall I pipe to you how kind is man, Here on this earth, where no despair endures, Where sound no sobs, where tear-drops never ran ; Where none pray daily for the death that cures ; Where tyranny ne'er reigned, since things began ; Where gnaws not woe, with sharper teeth than yours ? 164 To a Supper Party. Cazotte to a Supper Party. [A.D. 1788.] The coming Revolution ? One and all, I say you'll live to see it— and to die. I see its red aurora in the sky, Gorgeous with blood ; for all your heads shall fall. Fair Duchess, flippant Marquess, you shall call In vain for mercy. You, gay sir, shall lie Gagged in the cart. The headsman shall untie, Lady, those pearls, and make your head a ball. And you, and you, and you. — And, as for me, The Seer of Death, my end shall be the same As his who on the wall thrice cried aloud, " Woe, woe, Jerusalem ! Woe, woe to thee ! " And fell headlong; while, wrapt in blood and flame, The city died, and all its desperate crowd. To the Corpse of Poland. 165 Kosciusko to the Corpse of Poland. [a.d. 1796.] Now thou art dead. The sheet that Winter wove Of whitest snow to hide thy corpse away, Is reddened through and through, and no spring ray Will warm thee back, O Freedom's butchered love. And if at times thou still shalt seem to move, 'Twill be but like the dead, who, as some say, Shift in their graves when black eclipse turns day To unexpected night in heaven above. Dead, dead, quite dead. Henceforward thou shalt be A ghost that ever and anon shall come To scare the nations at their revelry ; A sudden chill shall hush their joyous hum ; And there upon the threshold they shall see Thy phantom standing motionless and dumb. 166 To Fettered Venice. The Last Doge to Fettered Venice. [A.D. 1799.] I SAW a phantom silting in her rags, Upon a throne that sea-gods wrought of old ; Her tatters, stamped with blazonry of gold, Seemed made of remnants of victorious flags ; Her face was fair, though wrinkled like a hag's, And in the sun she shivered as .with cold ; While round her breast she tightened each torn fold, To hide her chains, more thick than felon drags. O Venice, in the silence of the night, I think of when thy vessels used to bring The gems and spices of the plundered East Up to thy feet, and, like an endless flight Of hurrying sea-birds on a broad white wing, Heaped up the gift, that ever still increased. VI. Odes and other Poems* An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. i6g An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. When the Spirits that are masters Of the ever-ready storm, And that love to hound the waters, To destroy and to deform, See a mortal in their power, They prepare a joyous hour, Venting their primeval hatred Of the thing whose blood is warm. And they lay on Ocean's surface Their innumerable hands, And each hand begets a billow That advances and expands ; Till, amid the petrel's screaming, Rope and tattered sail are streaming, High above the seething water, From the mast that still withstands. But their hate is blind : they know not What each human prey is worth ; Not more cruel than impartial Is their elemental mirth ; 170 An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. And their fury is not keener O'er the greater than the meaner, Though their victim were a Shelley And the glory of the earth. Look around thee in the sunshine ; Watch this satin-surfaced deep, Which alone some rolling dolphins Stir, out yonder, in its sleep ; Till upon the sea shall settle Sunset hues of molten metal, Red and bright as crater gleamings, And the noon shall cease to creep. Here was washed ashore the greatest Of the prizes snatched away By the Spirits that are masters Of the wind and of the spray, When the waves might have exulted O'er the body they insulted With a wilder, shriller clamour Than since Nature's earliest day. Qesar braved the great Sea Spirits, And he bade his men row on ; And he cried : " Ye carry Caesar : Then why tremble and turn wan?" An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. 171 And the great waves roared more loudly ; But his galley sailed out proudly From the peril of the tempest, Like an onward-hurried swan. Yet the world would scarce have missed him ; There be Cresars more than one ; But a poet like to Shelley, Where be such beneath the sun ? And mankind had lost a treasure Past all mourning and all measure, When the beach-waves gently shelved him With a moan for what was done. For an English ear the breakers On this fatal Tuscan shore Seem to lisp the name of Shelley, And to mourn it evermore ; And the name appears to mingle With the rolling shelly shingle, And with every sound of Nature That he lived but to adore. Oh, I hear it in the murmur Of the fragrant woods of pine, As the sea-breeze softly hurries Through their long-extended line ; 172 An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. And I hear it faintly coming From the never-ending humming Of the world of busy insects That the undergrowths confine. 'Tis the spot ; and nought discordant Mars its beauty and repose : All along the tideless margin Pine or bay or ilex grows, Killed with an eternal warble ; While Carrara's crags of marble, Bare and lofty, print the azure, And, to landward, all enclose. All is peace and glorious sunshine ; Nature seems redeemed from war. Nothing stirs from beach to offing, Where a few feluccas are, Waiting for the breeze that's lazy ; While beyond, where all is hazy, Like the ghost of dwindled power, Loometh Elba, faint and far. But his genius knew no Elba ; And his star, without decline, Was extinguished at its zenith In the wild and tossing brine ; An Ode of the Tuscan Shore. 173 Not war's red and lurid planet As of incandescent granite, But a star of whiter radiance, Clear, effulgent, and divine. Mighty treasures lie for ever In each slimy ocean cave ; Galleons with their gold are buried Where the dark depth knows no wave ; But the total of their measure Matches not the matchless treasure That, in yonder stretch of water, Has for ever found a grave. There the great unwritten poems Of a mighty poet lie — Unborn children of a lineage That, once born, may never die. But the water mirrors heaven With the smile of one forgiven, While the breakers in the sunshine Sing an endless lullaby. 174 A Pageant of Siena. A Pageant of Siena. The old red towered walls climb round the hills On which Siena stands in lonely state, Scanning the ridgy plain, where gleam no rills And loom no towns, but only endless lines Of livid, furrowed hillocks which the great White, ploughing bullocks speck. From gate to gate A few tall cypresses and scattered pines Climb too, where, guarding streets that silence fills, The old, red-towered walls climb round the hills. Silent and empty in the August glare, The old, depopulated city sleeps ; Its dizzy belfry stabs the fiery air Into the sky's inexorable blue ; Across its great scooped, shell-shaped square there creeps No living soul, nor up the high paved steeps That are its streets ; perhaps a cart sways through Its dusty gates, behind a huge-horned pair, Creaking and empty in the August glare. O for the pageantry of olden days, Thou silent square ! — ye palaces that wind Up to the still cathedral, where the rays, Now gentler, kiss the marble and the gold ! A Pageant of Siena. 175 for the throngs that Time has left behind, Ye buttressed lanes, ye lofty archways lined With faded saints ; show those ye used to hold When the strong prosperous city loved displays And gaudy pageantry in olden days ! 1 hear a hum of men, a tramp and tread ; The City's Districts muster. First appears The District of the Panther ; white and red Its men-at-arms and pages, fifes and drums ; And next the yellow-liveried troop that bears The Ghibelline Standard of the Eagle nears ; Then Tortoise, Hedgehog, Snail, and Glow-worm come ; And the Guelf She- wolf, with her arms ahead, All black and silver, comes with tramp and tread. The Districts muster for the August race, And take their glossy racers to be blessed, Each in its own rich church, where, held in trace Of gold, the startled barb with hoof-steps loud Is led through flaunting banner, shield and crest To the high-altar's rail, where kneel close pressed The pages and the soldiers and the crowd, Who scan the gleaming limbs that shall efface Last year's defeat and win the August race. The huge old square, scooped like a palmer's shell, Siena's forum and its hippodrome, 176 A Pageant of Siena. Echoes a roar that drowns the mighty bell From battlemented belfry in the sky; The ring of olden palaces, become Ablaze with crimson hangings, looks like some Enchanted Coliseum, in which vie 'Scutcheon and standard ; so you scarce could tell The strange old square, scooped like a palmer's shell. In bright procession, ere the race is run, The rival Districts wind around the course, Each with its banner in the evening sun, Its clarions and its captain capped in steel, Its pages and its men that lead the horse Caparisoned and guarded by a force Of gaudy pikemen ; while the clarions peal And the crowd cheers the Panther that has won Its fickle favour ere the race is run. And as the standard-bearers one and all March by in motley blazonry, they cast Their standards high in air, and as they fall, Catch them above the throng with rapid hand, And twirl and twist them dextrously and fast In one unceasing play, until at last The whole vast square is by the bright silk fanned, And they have marched before the great Town Hall, Where stand the city's rulers one and all. Then comes, drawn by six bullocks of huge size, All white as milk, with many-coloured strings A Pageant of Siena. 177 About their horns, broad brows and large black eyes, The old Republic's standard-bearing wain, With its great Martinella bell, that rings Oft o'er the battle's roar, and whose sound brings Fear to the heart of her who plots in vain, Perfidious Florence. From its high mast flies Siena's She-Wolf standard of huge size. And now the course is clear, and those who don The colours of the Panther feel no fear ; A hundred thousand partisans look on With inborn urban rivalry, and hail The horses one by one as they appear, And hoot the Shell or Wave, or wildly cheer The Hedgehog, or the Dragon, or the Snail, Or the great Eagle that so oft has won, Whose knaves and rider yellow colours don. At last they start, and at terrific pace In dreadful crush adown the slope they tear, The Tortoise leading for a little space ; Then from the crowd the Panther shooting out, Maintains the lead thrice round the perilous square ; Then suddenly a great shout rends the air: "The Snail! The Snail!" all cry; and in hushed doubt All watch the two. The Snail has won the race, And slowly slackens its terrific pace. 178 A Pageant of Siena. And in the District of the Snail to-night Is revelry and feasting in the street, From great wrought-iron torch-holders the light Falls red and flaring on grim palace walls Decked with bright banners ; boards where all may eat Who care, are crowded ; while the old repeat Many an oft-told story that recalls What things the Snail has done in race and fight. Sleep shuns the District of the Snail to-night. On a Tuscan Road. 179 On a Tuscan Road. Now the white bullocks, in need of no goad, Homeward, at sunset, are coming from tillage ; Blithely the labourer carries his load ; Creaking and swaying, the wain blocks the road, Nearing the village. Slowly the sunshine departs from the shrine Close to the road, but still touches the fountain ; Fewer are those that pass by with a sign ; Dark grow the maize and the hemp and the vine Blue is the mountain. Foxglove and wall-flower cling to the stone, Over the lamp of the shrine that is crumbling ; Twilight is falling, the landscape is lone ; Save at the grating, where lingers a crone, Piously mumbling. Over the valley there creepeth a chill ; Slowly, far off, dies a song and its gladness ; Louder the frogs, with monotonous trill, Croak in the rivulets, seeming to fill Nature with sadness. 180 On a Tuscan Road. Then, with the mournful and tremulous croak, Even as night by degrees is unrolling Over the lonely plantations her cloak, Mingles a knell of lugubrious stroke, Distantly tolling. Suddenly priest-carried tapers appear, Faint in the twilight ; their office seems holy ; Men who support on their shoulders a bier Covered with gold and with velvet, draw near Through the corn, slowly. Who is the mortal, who, freed from his woes, Wends with such trappings from out of the present ? Who is the one who so sumptuously goes Out of the reach of his friends and his foes ? Only a peasant. Only a peasant, whom peasants are now, After a harvest day, going to render Back to the earth, tilled with sweat of his brow, Decking his bier with a little cheap show, Villagers' splendour. Slowly the tapers, with flickering light, Pass, reappear, and are lost in the distance ; While, overhead, in the gathering night, Twinkling, the stars grow more countless and bright, Taking consistence. On a Tuscan Road. 181 Still, for a while, tolls the funeral bell, Breaking the silence of fields that are lonely ; Then the frogs' croak, with monotonous swell, Rising again in the place of the knell, Breaketh it only. 182 Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. At Florence, in a listless street, A dull old palace stands, Where many gardens lone and sweet Grow odorous in the waning heat, As evening's shade expands. Stone shepherdesses quaint and grey Stand round it, and clipped trees ; And half-neglect and faint decay Bring gently home a by-gone day In twilight's blunt degrees. Upon the roof, against the sky, There stands a weather-vane, — A metal flag that with each sigh Of breeze that passes fitfully, Shifts like a thing in pain. And if you be not over far, Against the pearly light, You see two letters stamped,— C. R. , Upon it, near some clear white star, Just twinkling into sight. Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. 183 Few are the passers-by who know Whose those initials be ; Or who, in empty regal show, Saw here his ungrasped kingdom grow Each year more shadowy. Who thinks, out here, of that stiff race Of Stuarts, who ne'er could find The heart to veer or change their face, And left here, as their only trace, A weather-cock behind ? Thou rusty Jacobitish vane, Does thy faint creak still tell The sparrows, that, spite sun and rain, The King shall have his own again, And all shall yet be well? Or dost thou tell the breeze that fans The tree-tops near thee there, An endless tale of Prestonpans, Of Falkirk and the conquering clans, Culloden and despair ? I hear a music wild and shrill, A tramp of marching men, Exulting shouts from every hill, As clan on clan fast gathering fill A savage Highland glen. 184 Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. A new-raised standard swells and flaps ; There bursts a thundering cheer ; The air is black with up-thrown caps ; And like a flame, the news enwraps The Lowlands far and near. Hurrah, hurrah, Prince Charlie's come From over the sea at last ; And many a glen that was lone and dumb Re-echoes now with the tramp and hum Of an army growing fast. The German lapdogs round the throne Shall howl as they disgorge : March on, march on, to the bagpipe's drone ; The King shall have again his own From the German-jabbering George ! I hear in Holyrood a sound Of dance, as never since ; A revelry of hearts that bound, As Scotland's beauty gathers round The bonny kilted Prince. I hear the pibroch's loudening strain On Falkirk's conquered height, Where, riderless, with flying rein, The maddened chargers crush the slain And dash through crowds in flight. Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. 185 March on, march on, thou royal Scot, March on, the foe despair ! March on, march on, and linger not ! March on : the trembling George's yacht Is moored by the Tower stair. Old weather-vane, old weather-vane, What suddenly makes thee veer? Has Fortune's gale proved false again, That thou dost shift as in sudden pain, And is the prize not near ? I hear at dawn through the murky air A tramp of silent men, Who neither hope, nor fear, nor care, Nor question how the fight will fare, Provided all end then. I hear upon Culloden heath The last wild rush and shout Of spent battalions doomed to death, Resistless, but o'erwhelmed beneath The numbers that they rout. I hear long doubts end suddenly In shouts of fierce pursuit. In yells of unchecked butchery, In moans of lingering agony, That nightfall makes not mute. 186 Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. Old weather-vane, is that the tale Thou tellest to the wind, As, with a sympathising wail, It strokes thee now, grown old and frail, With all thy times behind ? Thou vestige of a played-out play, Flag of dead hopes and fears, What spares thee still, when, since thy day, Great storms have whirled great flags away, That waved a thousand years ? The Fleur-de-Lys, on land and seas, The Lion of St. Mark, The banner bearing Heaven's Keys, Like storm-snatched leaves from autumn trees, Have fled into the dark. From France the whirling storm-wind came, And made thrones rock and sway, With howl and hiss of Freedom's name, With cannon smoke and cannon flame It whirled thy times away. Who thought of thee, old Jacobite, When Jacobin was there ? Or when, at Rivoli, ere night, More men than fought on Falkirk Height Lay dead, to scent the air? Prince Charlie's Weather-Vane. 187 Thou sawest from thy breezy seat, Old flag of landless kings, The standard of the kingless land Here in these very streets, expand Its blood-bespattered wings. From land to land it flew, while pealed The cannon's thunderous laugh, And Europe's gathered squadrons reeled And fled from each successive field, Like whirling wind-swept chaff. One flag alone, the flag abhorred By him whose badge thou wast — Where'er the battle round it roared, On spar-strewn sea or blood-soaked sward Mocked it, from first to last ; One flag that waved, alone and high, Where Nelson's flag-ship loomed, Where drowning men with gurgling cry Hugged splintered masts, while sullenly The battle's last guns boomed ; One flag that proudly pierced the smoke As Waterloo's sun set, Held high within the squares that broke The charge that like God's thunder-stroke Had never failed as yet ; 1 8 8 Prince Charlie's Weather- Vane. And after many another fray, To-day it waves unfurled O'er realms undreamt of in thy day, And chains of isles that stretch away All round the great round world. For many be the gales that blow, Thou lone old weather-vane, That livest on through rain and snow, Though nevermore Prince Charlie now Can have his own atrain. PlCCIOLA. 189 Picciola. 1 (Introduction to the Volume, entitled " The New Medusa.") There was a captive once at Fenestrel, To whom there came an unexpected love In the dim light that reached his narrow cell From high above. No hinge had turned, no gaoler seen her pass ; But when once there, she undisturbed remained : For who would grudge a harmless blade of grass To one long chained ? Between the flag-stones of his prison floor He saw one day a pale green shoot peep out, And with a rapture never felt before He watched it sprout. The shoot became a flower : upon its life He fixed all hope, and ceased of self to think ; Striving to widen with his pointless knife The cruel chink. 1 Pronounced Pee-chu-la, i.e. Little One. igo Picciola. lie bore great thirst when, parched, she drooped her head In that close cell, to give her of his cup ; And when it froze, he stripped his wretched bed To wrap her up. Naming her Picciola ; and week by week Grew so enamoured as her leaves unfurled, That his fierce spirit almost ceased to seek The outer world. Oh even such a Picciola hast thou, My prison-nurtured Poetry, long been ; Sprung up between the stones, I know not how, From seed unseen! This Book is all a plant of prison growth, Watered with prison water, not sweet rains : The writer's limbs and mind are laden both With heavy chains ; Not with steel shackles, riveted by men, But with the clankless shackles of disease ; Which but Death's hand, perhaps, can sever, when He so shall please. What work I do, I do with numb chained hand, With scanty light, and seeing ill the whole, And each small part, once traced, must changeless stand Beyoncrcontrol. P'lCCIOLA. igi The thoughts came peeping, like the small black mice Which, in the dusk, approach the prisoner's bed, Until they almost nibble at his slice Of mouldy bread. The whole is prison work : the human shapes Are such fantastic figures, one and all, As with a rusty nail the captive scrapes Upon his wall. But if some shape of horror makes you shrink, It is perchance some outline he has got From Nightmare's magic lantern. Do you think He knows it not ? Scratched on that prison stone-work you will find Some things more bold than men are wont to read ; The sentenced captive does not hide his mind ; He has no need. Oh would my prison were of solid stone That knows no change ; for habit might do much, And men have grown to love their prisons lone ; But 'tis not such. It is that iron room whose four walls crept On silent screws, and came each night more near By steady inches while the victim slept, And had no fear. 192 PIcciola. At dawn he wakes ; there somehow seems a change ; The cell seems smaller, less apart the beams. He sets it down to fancy ; yet 'tis strange How close it seems ! The next day comes ; his narrow strip of sky Seems narrower still ; all day his strained eyes sweep Floor, walls, and roof. He's sure the roof's less high : He dares not sleep. The third day breaks. He sees ; he wildly calls On God and man, who care not to attend ; He maims his hands against the conscious walls That seek his end. All day he fights, unarmed and all alone, Against the closing walls, the shrinking floor, Till Nature, ceasing to demand her own, Rebels no more. Then waits in silence, noting the degrees — Perhaps with hair grown white from that dread doubt — Till those inexorable walls shall squeeze His strong soul out. The Archangels. 193 The Archangels. (A fragment.) The Seven Archangels in chorus. Hail to the Mightiest ; Infinite glory ; Now that His summons, Running through space, Bringeth us suddenly Face to His face. Lo, the uncountable Heavenly companies Meet in their multitudes For the enthroning Of a great woman-soul Gathered to grace. Raphael. A voice that astonished the sunrise As I kindled its quivering flame, Compelled me ; and back to the Master On my wonderful pinions I came. Through the rose and the green and the amber I flew as the morning began, And I flung on the world, as I passed it, The rays in a luminous fan. ig4 The Archangels. Anael. The Voice, the ineffable, reached me On Ocean's pale mutable face, As the tides were awaiting my signal To start on their rhythmical race. With a word and a sign I unleashed them In broadening circles of wave, And flew on the winds of the Master To keep the great tryst that He gave. Gabriel. As the summoning echo enwrapped me, I was bearing new life to the world, To awaken the germs as they slumbered In furrow and meadow tight-furled. I made the green barley-shoots quiver And the deep-buried grains of the rye, And flew back on the breath of the spring-time To the Lord of the Earth and the Sky. Michael. My summons was blent with the thunder That followed my hurrying flight, As I plunged in the mighty fir forests The spear of the levin by night. The titans flared high as I struck them ; But I freed the great rains by the blow, And flew to the tryst with my breastplate Lit up by the forest's red glow. The Archangels. 195 Lamael. We bless Thee, Maker of Mountains, Maker of chasm and height, That fillest the valleys with shadow And crownest the summits with light. Oriphiel. We bless Thee, Tamer of Tempests, That curbest the steed of the Gale, That rollest the peal of the Thunder And choosest the path of the Hail. Zachariel. We bless Thee, Lord of the Silence, Lord of the Desolate Sands, That sowest the Ocean with islands And holdest the seas in Thy Hands. The Seven Archangels in chorus. From the uttermost bounds of Creation We have come at the call of the Lord : It traversed the worlds like an arrow ; It clove the abyss like a sword. VII. Forest Notes, To the Forest. igg To the Forest. (A Sestina.) Forest, dim mysterious rustling Forest, The shelter of uncounted generations ; Where Life and Death war ever, each triumphant ; The sun above, and, underneath, the twilight ; Wherein is wrought the alchemy of seasons, The dream, the song, the cruelty of Nature : Where be the unremembered generations That once were men, with pulses strong, triumphant, But now are ghosts, conceived but in the twilight, Who trod these woods, each for its few short seasons, Singing its hymn to God or gods of Nature, And dropping like the leaves that strew the forest ? Lo, here Art never came, to stand triumphant, To tell us of dead nations lost in twilight, And teach their ended story of a season ; But in its wild monotonous life of Nature, Like Ocean the Unchangeable, the forest Outlives, forgets, and hides the generations. 1 love to watch thee in the leafy twilight Working in silent patience at the seasons, 200 To the Forest. With unseen, unheard forces, old in Nature ; Or hear the living harp, O lyric Forest, With which thou hast enchanted generations, In tones now weird, now joyous or triumphant. The Winds sweep by, blind Servants of the Seasons, Caressing all the lightest things in Nature,— The heathers, ferns, and hair-bells of the forest- Felling the oak, the pride of generations, The monarch that defied the years, triumphant, And sheltered its dumb children in the twilight. '&■ Oh, there is nothing in eternal Nature, Save Ocean, half so thrilling as the Forest, So full of charm to fleeting generations ; Outliving Life, outliving Death, triumphant ; Ineffable in sunshine and in twilight, Inscrutable in all its wondrous seasons. Envoy. So fill the forest, dreams ol generations ; And Mystery triumphant, born of twilight, And Pleasure that Pain seasons through all Nature. Song. 201 Song. Under the Winter, dear, Summer's note lieth : If it be sweet to hear, Song never dieth. Soon in the forest, love, Breezes shall bear it ; There, in the bough above, Lo, thou shalt hear it. 202 Durability. Durability. How many loves have met and passed away Beneath these silent sempiternal trees None knows or ever will : we can but say, "We too are loving 'neath the boughs to-day ; We too are kissing in the summer breeze Beneath these silent sempiternal trees Where many loves have met and passed away." Why naught is made for durability Ask of the grasses waiting for the scythe, Ask of the leaves that pause on Autumn's tree. We know but this : Fate lets some moments be When Time stands still, and souls may cease to writhe ; Nor ask the grasses waiting for the scythe Why naught is made for durability. The shadow of the great clouds sweeps the sward ; The wave of ears runs swift along the corn ; The breeze's kiss is hurrying o'er the ford. All's change and motion, and the forest chord Only vibrates to die as soon as born. All's like the wave of ears upon the corn, Or shadow of the clouds across the sward. Durability. 203 Beside the shadowy margin of the wood Oh let us sit and dream that all endures ; That love and nature know no widowhood. Here love would kiss forever if it could : So for one minute, love, — my hand in yours — Oh let us sit, and dream that all endures, Beside the shadowy margin of the wood. 204 Wood Honey Wood Honey. In the woods in summer weather There is honey for the bee; In the woods we haunt together There is honey too for me ; But the bee's is in the heather, And I gather mine in thee. Noon's Dream-Song. 205 Noon's Dream-Song. The day is long ; the worn Noon dreams. He shifts in vain, to ease his pain, And through what seems, he hears a song : A forest song, whose high note seems To tell of pain, endured in vain, And fills his dreams with things lost long. A dead love seems to thrill that song ; Hope nursed in vain, years passed in pain, Leaves fallen long, a tide that dreams. Then, as he dreams, the shades grow long ; And, in his pain, he moans in vain, While fades the song of what but seems. 2o6 Little Love-Song. Little Love-Sonsf. &>■ I LOVE you as the bee that sips The flower's lips ; I love you as the summer grasses Adore the sighing breeze that passes Their waving tips ; I love you as the streams the sun That makes them sparkle as they run, And turns the pebbles that they hold To lumps of gold ; And every day That you're away Is dull and weary, sad and cold. The Forest's Soul. 207 The Forest's Soul. My soul has mingled with the Forest's soul ; Danced with its lights and shadows ; laughed its laugh ; Caught every lightest whisper as it stole ; Drunk in each wood-bell what its fairies quaff; Thrilled with its every rustle overhead ; Thrilled with its every rustle underfoot ; Breathed breath of bracken ; heard what each tree said To sun and wind and dew, and what each root Said to the Earth, the dark eternal Mother ; What squirrel, mouse, and hedgehog told each other Of hidden nuts and grains ; and what the mole Whispered to tree-root gnomes, deep in his hole ; Yea, heard the tale the robin and the wren, The thrush, the blackbird, told his tiny hen : Oh, I have listened to the warning wail Of groping winds, precursors of the gale, Between the shuddering oak-trees that well know The battle-song of Tempest, and the roll Of forest thunder, distant still and low: My soul has mingled with the Forest's soul. '4 2o8 Unknown Songsters. Unknown Songsters. The song-bird drops ; the bird-song never dies. The black frost strikes ; the throstle's wee heart stops ; But Spring brings back the song, and none surmise The song-bird drops. Songsters there be, who never reach the tops Of Fame's high boughs, but whose low melodies Blend with the deeper shadows of the copse. They die ; yet song endures ; we hear it rise From other unknown throats. Death reaps his crops, But new notes wake, although without a prize The song-bird drops. Summer Woods. 209 Summer Woods. To summer woods, alembics of hot scent, We wend by moss and bracken, where the floods Of sunlight filter through a leafy tent; — To summer woods. The wood-dove's coo goes forth from where she broods ; The insect hum drones on and on unspent ; The shadows alter with the long day's moods. And all the elves that play at night have bent, From where they lurk beneath their mushroom hoods, Wee roguish eyes on us, whom Love has sent To summer woods. 2io Among the Firs. Among the Firs. And what a charm is in the rich hot scent Of old fir forests heated by the sun, Where drops of resin down the rough bark run, And needle litter breathes its wonderment. The old fir forests heated by the sun, Their thought shall linger like the lingering scent, Their beauty haunt us, and a wonderment Of moss, of fern, of cones, of rills that run. The needle litter breathes a wonderment ; The crimson crans are sparkling in the sun ; From tree to tree the scampering squirrels run : The hum of insects blends with heat and scent. The drops of resin down the rough bark run ; And riper, ever riper, grows the scent ; But eve has come, to end the wonderment, And slowly up the tree trunk climbs the sun. Wood Song. 211 Wood Sone. When we are gone, love, Gone as the breeze, Woods will be sweet, love, Even as these. Sunflecks will dance, love, Even as now, Here on the moss, love, Under the bough. Others unborn, love, Maybe will sit Here in the wood, love, Leafily lit ; Ilearking as now, love, Treble of birds ; Breathing as we, love, Wondering words. Others will sigh, love, Even as we : " Only a day, love, Murmurs the bee." 2i2 The Passing Wing. The Passing Wing. Oh would that Time were one immense To-day, That we might sit for ever where boughs sing, Amid these ripe hot ferns that light winds sway, Safe from the Morrow's and the Past's dark thing ; Oh would that Love could make the wood-dream stay, And stop Time's broad inexorable wing ; But no : Time's broad inexorable wing Sweeps on for all ; thou shalt not bid it stay. What brings thee woe, brings others life's sweet thing, Sweeps pain and fear, with joy and hope, away ; Love may not cry, while high boughs round it sing, " Oh would that Time were one immense To-day ! " Old Forest Charms. 213 Old Forest Charms. Upon her nest of twigs the wood-dove broods ; The cooing note rolls softly through young green ; A woodpecker is tapping on unseen ; The hum of insects fills the heated woods. The cooing note rolls softly through young green ; The sun-discs dance where golden light intrudes ; The hum of insects fills the heated woods As on the beech-tree's knotty roots we lean. The sun-discs dance where golden light intrudes ; The moss weaves carpets for the Elfin Queen ; As on the beech-tree's knotty roots we lean We con the forest's old eternal moods. The moss weaves carpets for the Elfin Queen, When tiny heads shall peep from fairy hoods : We con the forest's old eternal moods, — Old things that are, that shall be, that have been. 214 Charge of Winged Steeds. The Charge of the Winged Steeds. The firs are ranged in endless dark battalions On mountain-side and valley, line on line, Waiting the winds, that on their viewless stallions Are bearing down, at Winter's sudden sign. The mighty trees are grappling to the rock With eveTry root, preparing for the shock Of that wild cavalry, and seem to hearken Silent and sturdy, as the grey clouds darken, For the first howl of war. From far away Its echo comes ; and like a moaning wave It thrills each giant fir. The great boughs sway And shower down dead needles. Dark and grave The fir-trunks wait. And lo, a stronger sound, A roar, a rattle, shakes the very ground, Louder and louder yet, from North to South, And makes the forest shudder. Winter's mouth Blows its great battle peal. And now they come, The shadowy squadrons, howling their wild song Of death and devastation, from their home In the dark North : and as they whirl along, Urging their tameless steeds with icy whip, Charge of Winged Steeds. 215 The fir-stems bend beneath them. Clench your grip, Ye desperate roots ! — Again and yet again The Winds renew the charge and break in vain Against the serried trunks that creak and groan Indomitably firm, and hold their own Beneath a million scimitars. The roar Shrills to a lyric horror. When the last Of the winged stallions of the North has passed, And all is dumb and motionless once more, The forest's face has altered : all that told Of Summer's joy and Autumn's lingering sway, Has vanished in a moment, swept away By Winter's ghostly steeds ; and all is cold, And colourless and bare, and Nature old. The End. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. The CANTERBURY POETS. Edited by WILLIAM SHARP. 1/- Vols., Square Svo. Photogravure Edition, 2/-. Christian Year. Coleridge. Longfellow. Campbell. Shelley. WordswortS. Blake. Whittier. Poe. Chattertcn. Earns. Poems. Barns. Songs. Marlowe. Keats. Herbert. Victor Hugo. Cowper. Shakespeare: Songs, etc. Emerson. Sonnets of this Century. Whitman. Scott. Marmion, etc. Scott. Lady of the Lake, etc. Praed. Eogg. Goldsmith. M ackay's Love Letters. Spenser. Children of the Poets. Ben Jonson. Byron (2 Vols.). Sonnets of Europe. Allan Ramsay, Sydney DobelL Pope. Beaumont and Fletcher. Bowles, Lamb, etc. Sea Music. Early English Poetry. Kerrick. Ballades and Rondeaus. Irish Minstrelsy. Milton's Paradise Lost. Jacobite Ballads. Australian Ballads, Moore's Poems. Border Ballads. Song-Tide. Odes of Eorr.=3. Ossian. Fairy Music. Southey. Chaucer. Golden Treasury. Poems of Wild Life. Paradise Regained. Crabbe. Dora Greenwell. Goethe's Faust. American Sonnets. Landor's Poems. Greek Anthology, ilunt and Hood. Humorous Poems. Lytton's Plays. Great Odes. Owen Meredith's Pooms. Imitation of Christ. Painter-Poets. Women-Poets. Love Lyrics. American Humor. Verse. Scottish Minor Poets. Cavalier Lyrists. German Ballads. Songs of Beranger. Poems by Eoden Noel. Songs of Freedom. Canadian Poems. Modern Scottish Poets. Poems of Nature. Cradle Songs. Poetry of Sport. I tatthew Arnold. The Eothie (dough). Browning's Poems, Vol. 1 Pippa Passes, etc. Browning's Poems, Vol. 2 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, etc. Browning's Poems, Vol. 3 Dramatic Lyrics. Mackay's Lover's Missal Henry Kirke White. Lyra Nicotiana. Aurora Leigh. Naval Songs. Tennyson's Poems, Vol. 1, In Memoriam, Maud, etc. Tennyson's Poems, Vol. 2. The Princess, etc. War Songs. James Thomson. Alexander Smita. Lce-Hamiltcn. London : The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd. The Scott Library. Cloth, uncut edges, gilt top. Price 1/6 per volume. Romance of King Arthur. Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau's Week. Thoreau's Essays. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Lander's Conversations. Plutarch's Lives. Browne's Beligio Medici. Essays and Letters of P. B. Shelley. Prose Writings of Swift. My Study Windows. Lowell's Essays on the English Poets. The Biglow Papers. Great English Painters. Lord Byron's Letters. Essays by Leigh Hunt. Longfellow's Prose. Great Musical Composers Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus. Seneca's Morals. Whitman's Specimen Days in America. Whitman's Democratic Vistas. White's Natural History. Captain Singleton, Essays by Mazzini. Prose Writings of Heine. Reynolds' Discourses. The Lover: Papers of Steele and Addison. Burns's Letters. Volsunga Saga. Sartor Resartus. Writings of Emerson. Life of Lord Herbert. English Prose. The Pillars of Society. Fairy and Folk Tales. Essays of Dr. Johnson. Essays of Wm. Hazlitt. Landor's Pentameron, fee. Poe's Tales and Essays. Vicar of Vv ake field. Political Orations. Holmes's Autocrat. Holmei's Post Holmes's Professor. Chesterfield's Letters. Stories from Carleton. Jane Eyre. Elizabethan England. Davi3's Writings Spence's Anecdotes. London : The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd. THE SCOTT LIBRARY— continued. More's Utopia. Sadi's Gulistan. English Folk Tales. Northern Studies. Famous Reviews. Aristotle's Ethics. Landor's Aspasia. Tacitus. Essays of Elia. Balzac. De Musset's Comedies. Darwin's Coral-Reefs. Sheridan's Plays. Our Village. Humphrey's Clock, &c. Tales from Wonderland. Douglas Jerrold. Rights of Woman. Athenian Oracle. Essays of Sainte-Beuve. Selections from Plato. Heine's Travel Sketches. Maid of Orleans. Sydney Smith. The New Spirit. Marvellous Adventures. (From the Morte d' Arthur.) IXelps's Essays. Montaigne'3 Essays. Luck of Barry Lyndon. William Tell. Carlyle's German Essays. Lamb's Essay.3. Wordsworth's Prose. Leopardi's Dialogues. Inspector-General (Gogol). Bacon's Essays. Prose of Milton. Plato's Republic. Passages from Froissart. Prose of Coleridge. Heine in Art and Letters. Essays of De Quincey. Vasari's Lives. The Laocoon. Plays of Maeterlinck. Walton's Angler. Lessing's Nathan the Wise Renan's Essays. Goethe's Maxims. Schopenhauer's Essay:. Renan's Life of Jesus. Confessions of St. Augus- tine. Principles of Success in Literature (G. H. Lewes). What is Art? (Tolstoy) Walton's Lives. Renan's Antichrist. Orations of Cicero. Reflections on the Revolu- tion in France (Burke). Letters of the Younger Pliny. 2 vols., 1st and 2nd Series. Selected Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. Scots Essayists. Mill's Liberty. Descartes's Discourse on Method, etc. Kalidasa's Sakuntala, etc. Newman's University Sketches. Newman's Select Essays. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd. uaew Series of Critical JSio^rapbies. Edited by Eric Robertson and Frank T. Makzials. GEEAT WEITEES. Cloth, Gilt Top, Price is. 6J. ALREADY ISSUED— LIFE OP LONGFELLOW. By Prof. E. S. Robertson. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. By Hall Caine. LIFE OF DICKENS. By Prank T. Marzials. LIFE OF D. G. ROSSETTI. By Joseph Knight. LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Col. F. Grant. LIFE OF DARWIN. By G. T. Bettany. CHARLOTTE BRONTE. By Augustine Eirrell. LIFE OF CARLYLE. By Richard Garnett, LLD. LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R. B. Haldane, M.I'. LIFE OF KEATS. By W. M. Rossetti. LIFE OF SHELLEY. By William Sharp. LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. By Austin Dobson. LIFE OF SCOTT. By Professor Yonge. LIFE OF BURNS. By Professor Blackie. LIFE OF VICTOR HUGO. By Frank T. Marzials. LIFE OF EMERSON. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. LIFE OF GOETHE. By James Sime. LIFE OF CONGREVE. By Edmund Gosse. LIFE OF BUNYAN. By Canon Venables. GREAT WRITERS— continued. LIFE OF CRABBE. By T. E. Kebbel, M.A. LIFE OF HEINE. By William Sharp. LIFE OF MILL. By W. L. Courtney. LIFE OF SCHILLER. By H. W. NEVINSOH. LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRY AT. By David Hannay. LIFE OF LESSING. By T. W. Rolleston. LIFE OF MILTON. By Richard Garnett. LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. By Oscar Browning. LIFE OF BALZAC. By Frederick Wedmore. LIFE OF JANE AUSTEN. By OIoldwin Smith. LIFE OF BROWNING. By William Sharp. LIFE OF BYRON. By Hon. Roden Noel. LIFE OF HAWTHORNE. By Moncure Conway. LIFF OF SCHOPENHAUER. By Professor Wallace. LIFE OF SHERIDAN. By Lloyd Sanders. LIFE OF THACKERAY. By Herman Merivale and Frank. T. Marzials. LIFE OF CERVANTES. By H. E. Watts. LIFE OF VOLTAIRE. By Francis Espinasse. LIFE OF LEIGH HUNT. By Cosmo Monkhouse. LIFE OF WHITHER. By W.' J. Linton. LIFE OF RENAN. By Francis Espinasse. LIFE OF THOREAU. By H. S. Salt. Bibliography to each, by J. P. Anderson, British Musenm. LIBRARY EDITION OF "GREAT WRITERS.' Printed on large paper of extra quality, in handsome binding, Demy 8vo, price 2s. 6d. per volume. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.. LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. Crown Zvo, Cloth Elegant, in Box, Price 2s. 6d. THE CULT OF BEAUTY: A MANUAL OF PERSONAL HYGIENE. By C. J. S. THOMPSON. CONTENTS— Chapter I.— THE SKIN. Chapter II.— THE HANDS. Chapter III.— THE FEET. Chapter IV.— THE HAIR. Chapter V.— THE TEETH. Chapter VI.— THE NOSE. Chapter VII.— THE EYE. Chapter VIII.— THE EAR. " 'Quackevy,' says Mr. Thompson, 'was never more rampant than it is to-day' with regard to 'aids in beautifying the person.' His little book is based on purely hygienic principles, and comprises recipes for toilet purposes which he warrants are 'practical and harmless.' These are virtues in any book of health and beauty, and Mr. Thompson's advice and guidance are, we And, not wanting in soundness and common-sense."— Saturday Review. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD. LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. i/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy. Bound in White Grained Boards, with Gilt Lettering. WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO. THE TWO PILGRIMS. WHAT MEN LIVE BY. THE GODSON. IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, YOU DON'T PUT IT OUT. WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN ? 2/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy, NEW EDITIONS, REVISED. Small i2mo, Cloth, with Embossed Design on Cover, each containing Two Stories by Count Tolstoy, and Two Drawings by H. R. Millar. In Box, Price 2s. each. Volume I. contains — WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO. THE GODSON. Volume II. contains — WHAT MEN LIVE BY. WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN? Volume III. contains — THE TWO PILGRIMS. IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, YOU DON'T PUT IT OUT. Volume IV. contains — MASTER AND MAN. Volume V. contains — TOLSTOY'S PARABLES. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TY.\G. A BOOK FOR EVERY DINNER TABLE, Musicians' Wit, Humour, and Anecdote: BEING ONDITS OF COMPOSERS, SINGERS, AND INSTRUMENTALISTS OF ALL TIMES. BY Frederick J. Crowest, Author of" The Great Tone Poets," "The Story of British Music" Editor of "The Master Musicians" Series, etc., etc. Profusely Illustrated with Quaint Drawings by J. P. DONNE. In One Volume — Crown Svo, Cloth, Richly Gill, Price 3/6. Among the hundreds of stories abounding in wit and pointed repartee which the volume contains, will be found anecdotes of famous musicians of all countries and periods. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD., DON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. PR ^879 L516 1903 cop. 2 3 1158 00967 1743 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 373 236